


Root and Bloom

by Senka Hitomi (LadyTegan)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Ino-Shika-Cho Formation (Naruto), Loss of Parent(s), Mild Smut, Nara Shikamaru-centric, Post-Canon, Spoilers, Yamanaka Ino-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:34:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 21,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29145252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyTegan/pseuds/Senka%20Hitomi
Summary: A collection of 28 ShikaIno ficlets written in February 2021.
Relationships: Nara Shikamaru/Yamanaka Ino
Comments: 9
Kudos: 42





	1. quote

**Author's Note:**

> I've been out of the writing habit for a while now, so what better way to get back to it than a drabble series? Each prompt is pulled from a list of words I generated with help from my writing group. I'm writing one a day throughout the month of February, so some of these may be a little rough, but I hope you'll enjoy them. I know I've enjoyed coming back to this pairing after all this time.

**1. _quote_**

In the days that follow her father’s death, she spends more time in the flower shop, tending it when her mother is too grief-stricken to leave the house. Despite it all, there are still flowers to be sold—more even, now that so many people are mourning.

Still, others are trying to rebuild. They fill freshly turned soil with sprouts and seeds, hopeful that something new will grow. Celebrating or mourning, she gives them the best things she can find—beautiful, lively, radiant blooms. It gives her hands and her mind something to do.

When the bell rings, she has her back turned, cutting the stems of a dozen white lilies. She calls a harried greeting and gathers up the blossoms to deposit them in a vase. When she turns back, she expects to see another familiar face, hollowed by grief or scarred by war.

She does not expect to see him.

The sight loosens the grip on the vase; it slips for an instant before her fingers find purchase again. “Shikamaru. What are you doing here?”

He runs a hand through messy, dark hair; the shadows beneath his eyes are more pronounced than usual. “Good morning to you too,” he says, a sarcastic clip to his voice.

“You just startled me, that’s all.” She huffs, setting the vase down on the counter beside her. “It’s been a while.”

In some ways, that isn’t true. She’s seen him often enough—on the trek home from the battlefield, worn and weary; at family gatherings, the tight bonds of the Nara, Yamanaka, and Akimichi clans bringing them together in grief and joy alike; in the halls of the hospital, as he visits injured friends and she drags herself between shifts.

But in all this, they’ve scarcely had a quiet moment, the two of them face to face. She watches him now, a mirror reflecting all the markers of mourning she has seen in herself.

“How’s your mom?” He deflects. He thumbs the leaf of a fern, not meeting her gaze.

“She’s…” She tries to find the words for the sight of her mother sobbing silently into her hands at the kitchen sink. “…coping. How is Yoshino?”

He turns back to her for the first time. A hint of his usual grumpiness creeps through. “That’s why I’m here, actually. She sent me here to get a quote on an arrangement. She wants to, uh… put together something for the memorial tomorrow.”

 _Memorial._ Just that one word is enough to make her stomach drop. Her world set reeling for an instant before it steadies again. She grounds herself in the fresh green smell of the plants, in the waxen feel of the leaves between her fingers. She focuses instead on the words that came before. _A quote on an arrangement._

“What exactly is she looking for?” A terse shrug gives her the answer she expected. “You don’t know. Of course. Well…” She grabs a pad of paper, begins to sketch out ideas. Orchids. Chrysanthemums. Lilies. Baby’s breath as filler. Something not too extravagant, but beautiful nonetheless. Something worthy of a great sacrifice.

When she looks back up, he has moved closer to the counter. Long fingers drum an off-tempo rhythm on the surface. “The price doesn’t really matter to her, she just wanted to know—”

“Don’t worry about it.” She tucks the pencil behind her ear, glancing around for a new receptacle.

“What?”

“Don’t worry about the price.”

She moves around the counter, wiping hands on her apron, but her beeline for the chrysanthemums is halted by a hand on her elbow. For the first time, their gazes meet fully.

“Ino. You don’t have to give us special treatment. I’m happy to pay.”

She lays her hand over his. “I’m doing this, Shikamaru. I want to. It’s…” She feels, in that moment, the weight of their mutual losses—both their fathers, gone in a flash; the horrible, horrible silence that followed. He is the only one who understands the depth of that silence. Her hand tightens around his. “It’s the least I can do. For y—” She clears her throat and drops her hand. “For Yoshino.”

She breaks his grip, moving smoothly toward the cooler. “You can’t stop me. I just will.”

The sigh that follows is so familiar she cannot help but smile. For the first time in a long time, her chest feels lighter.

“Fine.” He mumbles the rest, though she is sure she hears the words “stubborn” and “troublesome”.

“You can come pick it up in the morning.” She checks the stock, makes sure she has what she will need before she closes the cooler again. “It’ll be ready by 8.”

This time as she passes him, he catches her hand. She feels the shock of it through her whole body.

“Ino.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. She can see everything that he wants to say folded into the lines of his frown. “I think the words you’re looking for are ‘thank you’. And you’re welcome.”

There is a strange expression on his face, caught somewhere between a laugh and sigh. “Thank you.”

With her free hand, she grabs the paper off the counter and tucks it into the pocket of his flak jacket. “There’s your quote. Tell Yoshino I said hi. And I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He squeezes her hand, once. It feels like the briefest instant and an eternity all at once.

“See you tomorrow.”


	2. weak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 2: weak
> 
> "This skinny kid, who would rather be napping or cloud gazing than training on any given day, is going to be responsible for catching her? It’s a laughable notion. Even he knows that."

_**2\. weak** _

“You’re going to have to catch her.”

“What?!”

Ear-splitting as it is, Shikamaru can’t entirely disagree with the sentiment behind his teammate’s incredulous shriek. But Asuma’s expression doesn’t waver. This isn’t a joke.

“For this formation to work, Ino, your body has to land somewhere safely. We can’t have you getting injured every time you use the Mind Transfer. Choji will already have his hands full as your frontline fighter. So that means it falls to you, Shikamaru, to catch Ino and make sure she doesn’t get hurt.”

Ino glances in his direction, mouth agape and already sputtering objections.

“Shikamaru?! He’s going to drop me!”

He doesn’t have to listen to know what shape the rest of her protests will take. This skinny kid, who would rather be napping or cloud gazing than training on any given day, is going to be responsible for catching her? It’s a laughable notion. Even he knows that.

Shikamaru’s strengths have never lay in his athleticism or his chakra reserves or even really in his clan abilities. He lives in a world that exists mostly in his head, where concepts like weakness and strength matter more as theoretical advantages on a battlefield, to be weighed against competing factors. He knows he is weak, compared to people like Choji and Asuma and even Ino—that is factored into every calculation he makes.

And if he’s being entirely honest with himself, the thought of being responsible for her—for making sure that she is safe and whole by the time she returns to consciousness—is terrifying.

Asuma heaves a sigh, cutting off Ino’s protests as a cloud of smoke escapes from his mouth. “On the battlefield, nothing is more important than trusting your teammates. You should learn that early. The three of you have to think like a single unit. If one part breaks down, the whole thing doesn’t work.” He claps his hands together, nodding toward the training ground. “Come on. Time to run drills.”

The first hundred times are not a success. For weeks, he drops her as often as he catches her. She hesitates when she falls. He moves a moment too soon, or a moment too late. They both leave the training field with bruises—arms, heads, pride aching. She glowers at him across the table at Yakiniku Q. His sighs are more punctuated than is strictly necessary.

It is a sweltering day of training, nearing sunset, when she sways on her feet, her eyes going strangely blank. He moves on instinct, at her side just as her knees buckle.

She passes out for no more than a few heart-stopping seconds. When she opens her eyes again, she is disoriented, embarrassed, but unhurt. Skinny arms support her shoulders, her torso. Shikamaru hopes she is still too dazed to notice how fast his pulse is racing—the flush in his cheeks, at least, he can blame on the heat of the day.

“You caught me.” Her words are laced with only mild surprise.

He hardly registers Choji and Asuma’s alarmed cries as they rush over to kneel at her side. “Yeah. I guess I did.”

“I think that’s enough for today.” Asuma’s brow is creased with worry. “You okay, Ino?”

“I’m okay.” She sits up slowly, bracing her palms against the ground of the training field. “Just got a little lightheaded, that’s all.” She removes herself from his arms, not meeting his eye. “Thanks, Shikamaru.”

He offers to help her home—he will never hear the end of it from his mother if he doesn’t—and Ino surprises him by not objecting. She is strangely quiet the whole way. Much as her chatter sometimes gives him a headache, her silence unnerves him more.

They are nearly back to her house by the time she speaks again.

“I’m sorry I called you weak.”

He doesn’t even recall hearing her say that all those weeks ago, but he shrugs it off anyway. “I mean, it’s true.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. She clearly expected him to deny it, or at least fight back. “Shikamaru… you’re a weird kid.”

He shrugs again. They have nearly reached her door and he stops in the path, sticking his hands in his pockets. “We’re all weak sometimes. We have to rely on our friends to be strong when we can’t be.”

He looks at the sky, but he feels the weight of her gaze on him. As is frequently the case with Ino, he has no idea what will come out of her mouth next.

“Guess you’re right.” His head snaps back down just as she pokes him in the shoulder. “But now that I know you can do it, I expect you not to drop me anymore. Okay?”

He sighs, but he can feel a smile pulling at his mouth. “Okay.”

Watching her walk away from him, confident and hale again, it’s a promise he thinks he'll be able to keep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As someone who has passed out multiple times in my life in inconvenient places, I sure wish I had someone designated to catch me. I had a few ideas floating around my head for this prompt, but this is the one I landed on. I love writing Ino-Shika-Cho at their very beginnings, knowing how strong they become.


	3. song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 3: song
> 
> "She understands, suddenly, the melodies that he cannot get out of his mind. The songs that haunt him."

_**3\. song** _

Sometimes, he hums in his sleep.

She thought it was strange at first. He is sometimes a whistler, but never really a singer. She can count on one hand the number of times he has been drunk enough to even consider singing in front of other people. For him to hum, even unconsciously, is unusual.

Often after these nights, he wakes quieter too. It is not easy to see for anyone who does not know him well—he is the farthest thing from a morning person even on the best days. But she notices the silences and marks them, even as she fills his world with chatter.

She marks that silence but does not understand it until much later: the first night that he wakes in the middle of the dream, panicked and panting, suffused in a cold sweat, eyes wild and wide.

She catches his hand to steady him, plants a firm palm between his shoulder blades, and rests her chin on his shoulder. “Shikamaru? It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re safe. I’m here.”

It takes him a moment to reorient—she can feel the rapid thrum of his pulse all through his chest. He grips her hand so hard it almost hurts, and she squeezes back, grounding him. “Hey. It’s okay.”

He pulls his knees to his chest and lets his head sink toward them. She knows he hates anyone to see him like this—he is meant to be the mastermind, always in control. She waits for him to speak, rubbing little circles into his back until he uncurls again.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I’m pretty enough that losing one night of beauty sleep won’t kill me,” she jokes. That he does not even snort or roll his eyes is worrisome. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, kisses the back of his neck. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

There is a long moment of quiet, the only sounds the shudder of his breath as he tries to control it and the soft hiss of the summer rain outside. “Just… a nightmare.”

“I figured that much out.” That earns her a sidelong glance. _Good._ He is coming back to himself, if slowly.

“It was…” He rubs his face, grimacing. “Had a dream about the mission to go after Sasuke.”

Ino has heard the account of that disastrous mission in dozens of disparate pieces, forming an incomplete image of it in her head. Though she has never gotten the full story, beginning to end, she knows the beats well enough: five of her classmates dispatched to retrieve their rogue compatriot. Two returned nearly dead, the other three not well themselves. As the leader of that mission, Shikamaru has shouldered the burden of guilt for years. He has spoken very rarely of his own battle, pitted against a woman from the Sound who wielded a flute as a weapon.

She understands, suddenly, the melodies that he cannot get out of his mind. The songs that haunt him. She waits for him to speak again, but he only leans into her touch, as though it might purge the echoes from his mind.

She runs fingers through his hair and draws him back down to the pillow. Words seem insufficient, so instead, she hums her own little tune. She has no great talent, but it will be enough to keep the memories at bay. He closes his eyes, drawing toward her like it is a siren song. She sings until his breathing is even again, until the lines of worry in his face are smoothed by untroubled dreams.

And then the night is quiet again, the only song the rhythm of soft sighs of air and the patter of rain on the windowpane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if the last quarter of this gets a little incoherent. I got hit by a wave of exhaustion while writing the ending, but I want to try to keep to the one-a-day schedule as much as possible, so here you go!


	4. kick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4\. kick
> 
> "She’s already struggled to explain the abrupt change in her clothing choices, the moments when she had to slip away from work and cover the sound of her own retching. Soon, there will be no hiding this."
> 
> cw: mentions of ED, pregnancy, morning sickness

4\. kick

She first feels the sensation in the middle of the night. A little flutter, like she has swallowed a fish and now its tail and fins are brushing the inside of her gut as it swims. She sits up in bed, balling her fists in the covers, trying to tell herself that she imagined the sensation, the way she sometimes feels like she is falling when she closes her eyes to rest.

But there it is again, a minute later.

_Not now._ This cannot be happening now, not with so much else always vying for her attention—shifts at the hospital and Interrogation unit, helping her mother with the flower shop, juggling missions and assignments. But Ino is not a fool. She has done the math and read the signs for what they are. _Eighteen weeks._ The bouts of intermittent nausea. The bone-deep fatigue. The weight gain. That night at Yakiniku Q a month and a half ago when the smell of beef nearly made her lose her dinner.

And, of course, the missed periods. She’s no stranger to them—years of crash dieting in her teens wreaked havoc on her body for a while. But that was the past, and much as she’s tried to ignore it or write it off, this is different.

Another little flutter of movement, this time nearer to her hip. She swings her legs over the side of the bed, pressing bare feet to the cold floor. She leans over, elbows on thighs, hands over her mouth. She’s already struggled to explain the abrupt change in her clothing choices, the moments when she had to slip away from work and cover the sound of her own retching. Soon, there will be no hiding this.

She paces her apartment for the rest of the evening—there will be no sleeping now. She feels like she understands Shikamaru better than ever, running scenarios over and over again in her head, discarding them one after the other.

She finally dozes off on the couch just as the sun starts to rise. Her eyes feel gritty and her head heavy, but she drags herself through the motions of preparation for the day ahead.

She finds him stretched out in his usual cloud-gazing spot after her shift at the hospital. He does not open his eyes when she approaches, but he shifts to make room for her next to him.

“You’re quiet.” As the silence stretches on, Shikamaru opens one eyes, tilting his head to look at her sprawled out beside him. “What’s wrong, Ino?”

“I have some news.” She flicks a strand of hair back and forth in her fingers.

He does not turn, but she can feel his attention fix on her, that singular focus of his that unnerves and warms her at once. “Yeah?”

“I think I’m…” She does not think; she _knows_. She lets the strand of hair slip through her fingers. Her hand hovers over the place where, just yesterday, she felt the kick. “I’m pregnant.”

She’s not sure what she expected from him. An exclamation of surprise? Stupefied silence? Panic? Whatever she expected, it is not what she gets as he rolls over on his side, both eyes now open. His expression is impossible to read.

“I was wondering when you were going to tell me.”

It is her turn to stare, bewildered. Her fear melts quickly into indignation. “When I was going to… you knew?!”

He winces at the sudden rise in volume. “An educated guess. If it makes you feel better, I don’t think anyone else has noticed. Even after how green you got at the restaurant the other day.”

_Well, if it was only that…_ Still, she glares at him.

“Oh, it wasn’t just that,” he says, as if plucking the thought from her head. “I’d noticed other things. I was just waiting for you to say something.”

Probably a good tactic on his part, but she is still annoyed. “You…!” She pokes him in the side, words failing her.

In her surprise, she has almost let her purpose get away from her. She sobers a little, growing reticent again. “Shikamaru, you know it’s…” She trails off, waiting for him to take the hint, but he only stares back at her. All at once, the panic of the past weeks resurges. What if he doesn’t want this? She can manage on her own—she has her mother, Sakura, so many friends for support—but that doesn’t mean she _wants_ to manage on her own. What she wants… what she _wants_ is—

He lays a hand across her stomach, tentative but reassuring.

“Have you been feeling okay? Staying hydrated? Getting enough to eat? You haven’t been in any pain, have you?”

And there it is: weeks’ worth of suppressed concern bubbling to the surface. He presents a good front, but Shikamaru is a worrier and always has been. The flip side of being a good strategist.

She finds, suddenly, that she isn’t as worried.

“I’m fine. The morning sickness was horrible, but it’s pretty much gone now.” She presses her hand over his. “I felt a kick last night. For the first time.” It will be some time before the child’s kick is strong enough for him to feel it, but she likes the warm weight of his hand.

“Really?”

His expression is guileless, full of delighted disbelief. That she can still surprise him even a little, despite everything, warms her chest and she feels her stomach flip. She is unable to contain a smile as she nods. “Mhm.”

The quiet wonder in his eyes at her confirmation makes her glow. Yes—she won’t be able to conceal this for very long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I missed posting this yesterday! Had a random bout of vertigo that made it very hard to concentrate. But I think it was ultimately for the best--I pivoted on the idea for this prompt and I think I like what I ended up with way more than the first thing I started. A variation on a fic like this has been floating around in my head for a while. Maybe if I have the time I'll expand it? (She says, knowing full well she has no time and plenty of other fics that need finishing.)
> 
> Also, the amount of research that I did for this ~1000 word fic is kind of absurd. Is there a way to signal to your computer "please do not target me with childcare/pregnancy ads, I swear I was just doing this for fic research"? Because if so, pretty sure I need to do that now.


	5. desert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 5: desert
> 
> "So he has traveled to the Sand and sat through a dozen mind-numbing meetings and collected messages to ferry back to Konoha. And now he wanders the night market, all because his troublesome teammate wants a souvenir."

“Bring me back something pretty, okay?”

Shikamaru is sure Ino meant it as a joke, but for some reason it’s still rattling around his head a week later.

He still can’t quite fathom why Tsunade chose _him_ as an emissary to the Sand. He’s smart, he’s observant, but he’s also young and inexperienced and not a smooth talker by any stretch of the imagination. Yet here he is, suffering through meetings in the oppressive desert heat all because… what, exactly? Because he gets along with Temari?

Which, he can acknowledge, is not the easiest thing. She can be a bit prickly. But she’s smart and capable and doesn’t dance around the point—even if that bluntness is sometimes to her detriment. He can’t fathom why their friendship should have become the focal point for an alliance between the two nations, but he supposes there are worse ways to rebuild trust.

And it isn’t as though he could have said no. Tsunade scares him nearly as much as his own mother.

So he has traveled to the Sand and sat through a dozen mind-numbing meetings and collected messages to ferry back to Konoha. And now he wanders the night market, all because his troublesome teammate wants a souvenir.

Choose the wrong thing, and he knows it will be weeks of annoyed huffing and pointed remarks and the silent treatment. At least, that’s how it would have been, before. These days, he is not so sure. Ever since Sasuke went rogue, Ino has softened strangely toward her teammates. Which is not to say she is _soft_ —far from it—but things are different now. She holds them closer than she used to; she has witnessed firsthand how the dissolution of a team has hollowed Sakura.

Shopping for his other teammate is easy. There’s a flavor of Choji’s favorite brand of chips that can only be found in Suna. He has already stuffed his travel bags with as many as he can reasonably carry. But Ino… Ino is difficult. It should be easy. He knows the things she likes—flowers, perfumes, fancy makeup. Beautiful things. _Sasuke._ He grits his teeth a little at the thought. The ship has sailed on being able to bring that particular gift back to her. Better not to dwell on it.

So he redirects his thoughts again as he meanders between stalls, hands tucked in his pockets. Cold is quick on the heels of nightfall in Suna, and he is already regretting not wearing more layers. _Look how I suffered for this stupid gift,_ he wants to say to her upon his return, but he knows he never will. Instead, he will give her the gift with a practiced nonchalance, one that conceals all the strange nerves that seem to emerge every time she spends too long looking at him.

He passes a stall of scarves and considers whether she would like them. There is a particular blue-green fabric that is nearly a perfect match for the color of her eyes. But if he gifts her that, she might say something troublesome like “Oh, Shikamaru, so you’ve been staring at my eyes?” and that conversation is a headache waiting to happen.

There are countless jewelry vendors, but if a scarf is a terrible idea, jewelry is a death sentence for his pride. A flush rises in his cheeks; he tries to tell himself that the warmth is a developing sunburn, a consequence of the Sand’s unyielding sun, even though he has been meticulous in his avoidance of the worst heat of the days.

Nearly a quarter-hour of wandering deposits him finally in front of a booth of strange glass sculptures. Sand is an infinite resource here in the desert and this creator has elevated an annoyance of daily life into a unique art, molding it into intricate constructions. There are typical sandglasses laid out across the display surface, but behind them, a row of rounded glass constructs rest, each one recreating the undulating texture of dunes. Little streams of sand leaking through a jagged sieve in the center of the sculpture, sinking to the bottom in uneven piles. One in particular catches his eye: the glass tinted a subtle blue that almost transforms the ripples of sand into the turbulent waves of an ocean.

The merchant, a woman in perhaps her late fifties or early sixties, watches him look over her wares with a vague smile. “Looking for something in particular?”

“A gift for a… for a friend.” He winces at the way his voice catches. “She wanted something unique. And these are incredible.”

The woman’s smile broadens. She picks up one of the unusual, rounded sandglasses in the back and shifts it gently from side to side, letting the sand resettle in peaks across the bottom. “You certainly won’t find these anywhere else. There’s not a more memorable ware to be found in this bazaar if you want something truly special to gift to _someone_ special.” He tries to ignore her knowing smile, but the flush has climbed all the way up to his hairline.

In the end, he is persuaded, returning back to his lodgings with the blue construct safely wrapped. He is careful to secure it in his pack; the whole trip home, he checks and rechecks it, inspecting the surface for any minute cracks or chips caused by the jostling movement of the journey. She must only have meant the request as a joke—but somewhere inside him, he cannot shake the urge to surprise her anyway. If only to see the look on her face. If only for that inevitable moment of stunned silence.

A little piece of the desert to bring her. A way to mark the time of his absences.

His steps quicken towards home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art I describe here is a real thing, and it's hella cool--just search for 'deep sea sand art' if you want a visual. Anyway. This one was kinda fluffy and disjointed, but I like the idea of them bringing one another little gifts when they're away from one another.


	6. relief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 6: relief
> 
> "It starts, she tells herself, as stress relief."

**6. _relief_**

It starts, she tells herself, as stress relief.

The arrangement is convenient for them both. There is no need to become accustomed to one another—they already share a language, an understanding built on years of exposure to every little quirk and nuance buried beneath the other’s skin. Their trust in one another is absolute.

She is surprised by how easy it is, the first time. With him, everything is simple: lips and hands and tongues chase one another in a practiced dance; a life-affirming heat rises through her like an inferno. With each kiss, the tension in her muscles unravels a little more. He has spent years catching her when she falls, and he knows every curve of her; her breath hitches as his hands quest down her breast, her waist, her thighs. This time, they fall together.

When they are finished, they lay side by side in the quiet. She tells herself that the feeling of serenity when her eyes trace the fall of moonlight across the lines of his back is only a remnant of the orgasmic high. That she spends the next week reliving the phantom feel of his touch on her skin in exquisite detail is harder to explain away.

But each time, even as the coiled spring of tension inside her relaxes under his touch, a new kind of tension takes its place. _Stress relief_ , she tells herself, as his hands become beloved. _Stress relief_ , as she begins to recognize that no one else fills her broken parts quite as well as he does. _Stress relief_ , as she moans his name into the curve of his neck and realizes that she wants no one else.

She stares at the ceiling as he lays beside her, his breathing soft and even. She tries not to shift, not wanting to wake him, so the restless energy burns through her, to the tip of her limbs and back again.

“What are you worrying about?”

She did not even hear him shift, but he has turned over on his side to watch her, fully awake.

“Just… thinking.”

She expects that he will give up then, the vagueness of her response making it not worth the trouble. But instead, he stretches a hand out, drawing her toward him until they are curled together, only inches between them.

“You won’t feel better until you talk about whatever is bothering you.”

There is such a thing as knowing a person _too_ well.

She huffs a sigh. For all the time she has spent ruminating, the right words are hard to find. “Shikamaru… is this…” She stops and starts again. “Do you want this to be… Am I…”

Her pulse pounds to the rhythm of the words she has found but cannot say. _I love you. I love you. I love you._

“Tell me how you feel about this. About us.”

Recognition flickers in his face, his eyes widening. Then, ever so slowly, a lazy grin spreads across his face. He snakes a hand around her waist, drawing her further in until there is no space between them. He kisses a line up her collarbone, to the soft skin of her neck, to just below her earlobe, each one careful and precise. She melts into his touch.

“That’s what you’re worried about?” His words are whispered, meant for her and only her. “Ino… you don’t have to worry about me. I was sunk from the moment this started.”

This time, it is a new kind of relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gotten kinda behind on this, but I'm gonna try to catch up.


	7. tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 7: tea
> 
> “When are you going to bring this young lady you’re seeing over for tea, Shikamaru?” Sometimes Shikamaru forgets that not all of his observational skills were inherited from his father.

  1. **tea**



“When are you going to bring this young lady you’re seeing over for tea, Shikamaru?”

Sometimes Shikamaru forgets that not all of his observational skills were inherited from his father. Now, as he half-chokes on tea, it is impossible not to remember.

While he finishes sputtering, Yoshino moves around the kitchen, putting away pots and wiping down the counter. She only continues when he has caught his breath again.

“Really, I thought your father and I raised you better than to run around keeping secrets.”

He could try to deny it, but with his mother, there is no use. She will see through any lie he tries to throw at her. So he cuts straight to the most important question.

“How—?”

Yoshino throws the kitchen towel over her shoulder, crossing her arms as she regards her son. Her gaze is withering. “You think I can’t tell when my only child is infatuated? Hmm.” She clucks dismissively. “You’ve been mooning around for weeks now. You’re actually doing your own laundry and keeping it pressed. You’re out at all hours. And Mrs. Yamanaka tells me you’ve been at the flower shop quite a bit recently.”

Shikamaru can feel his face heating as she lists every incriminating behavior. Apparently, he has not been circumspect. A shot of icy alarm runs through his veins at the mention of the Yamanaka flower shop, but it disperses when he realizes she has not continued. There is some measure of relief in knowing that his mother hasn’t _quite_ put it all together. 

“I didn’t think you would want to meet her so soon.”

That is the wrong thing to say—he knows it as soon as it leaves his mouth. Yoshino’s gaze sharpens and Shikamaru is cowed by its weight. “Wouldn’t want to meet her so soon?! Really, Shikamaru! You are your father’s son through and through.”

He doesn’t want to ask what that’s supposed to mean. And he doesn’t bother to correct the little white lie of his earlier statement. Though she doesn’t seem to realize it yet, Yoshino doesn’t need to _meet_ this young woman. Ino Yamanaka has already spent more than a few nights at her dinner table.

“Do you think I’m going to embarrass you? Or that I won’t like her? Really, Shikamaru, I can’t know if you don’t even give me the chance.”

He sighs. In fact, he doesn’t think anything of the sort. He knows for a fact that his mother _adores_ Ino. When Ino is at the Nara household, she has always been the picture of politeness—helping Yoshino with the dishes, bringing her favorite flowers to decorate the house, joking with her about how much effort it takes to keep her unruly son in line. Her screechy, bossy, troublesome nature is all reserved for Shikamaru. In his mother’s household, she is the daughter Yoshino always wanted. He just can’t imagine that it’s a good idea to give two women who already hold so much sway in his life that much access to one another.

Still, there is something that warms him at the thought of finally giving his mother a daughter-in-law that she already loves so much. And immediately he feels his blush deepen because _why on earth am I jumping straight to_ marriage?!

“You’re awfully quiet.” His mother’s voice brings him back to reality, and he realizes he has lost the thread of what she is saying.

Fortunately, he is saved from having to figure that out by a knock on the door. He breathes a sigh of relief as Yoshino moves to answer, but as she leaves the kitchen, she gives him a look that says this discussion is not finished. Shikamaru leans his head back, closes his eyes, and prays for his mother to have a sudden lapse of memory.

“—been awhile since I last stopped by. I brought these for you, Yoshino-san.”

Shikamaru sits bolt upright, that voice like a shock to his spine.

“Oh—you remembered daffodils are my favorite! You’re such a sweet girl, Ino. Shikamaru! Your teammate is here.”

_Speak of the devil…_ He cannot even get to his feet before Ino enters the room, Yoshino trailing behind her with a bouquet of yellow blossoms in her arms. Ino’s smile is catlike as she sits down next to him at the table.

“Hello, Shikamaru.”

“Morning,” he grumbles.

Even as she searches for a vase, Yoshino shoots a piercing look over her shoulder. “Shikamaru! Is that anyway to greet your friend? Ino, my dear, I apologize for my son’s behavior.”

“Oh, it’s alright!” Ino props her chin on her hands, giving Shikamaru another sly smile. “I’m used to Shikamaru’s grumpiness by now.”

He gives her a look that he hopes says _what do you think you’re doing_? If she registers it, she doesn’t react.

Yoshino returns to the table, having secured a vase for the flowers. “Can I get you some tea, Ino dear?”

“I would—”

“I thought you had a shift at the hospital this morning, Ino.” Shikamaru interrupts, glancing at her pointedly.

Ino’s grin only widens—oh yes, she definitely understood that earlier look. Now she’s just teasing him. “Not anymore. Sakura needed someone to cover her shift this evening, so we swapped. I’ve got all the time in the world. And I would love some tea.”

Shikamaru sighs. He should know better by now—he will never win this battle of wills. Her eyes are sparkling with mirth as she gazes at him and damn it all if he isn’t charmed by it. Those are eyes to get lost in and Shikamaru is well and truly adrift.

“Glad you’ll be able to join us,” he says, and despite all his chagrin, he finds he means it.

Yoshino has already retrieved the teapot— _did she just have that ready?_ —and brings it to the table with a new cup for Ino. Shikamaru looks up at her as she pours. She meets his eye, and there is a spark of understanding in her face that he doesn’t like.

_Damn it._ So much for secrecy. It seems his mother has gotten her wish after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slowly but surely catching up. This was actually supposed to be my day 10 prompt, but the idea ran away with me, so you're getting it a little earlier.
> 
> I really hate the antagonistic mother-in-law (or future mother-in-law) trope--I think it's rooted in a lot of anti-feminist stereotypes--so I always try to subvert it where I can. I like to think that Ino and Yoshino get along swimmingly--and give Shikamaru all manner of grief along the way. :)


	8. table

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 8: table
> 
> cw: sexual content
> 
> “This isn’t going anywhere, Ino, and we both know it. For now, I think we should table this.”
> 
> She turns her face away from him—an overdramatic gesture, maybe, but she feels justified in it. “Fine.”

**8. _table_**

It is an argument they have had so many times she can almost recite it from memory.

“I know your techniques better than anyone. It’s stupid that they’re sending Ryosuke instead.” Ino fumes, pacing the length of the kitchen, fueled by fury.

Shikamaru, leaning against the counter, exhales tiredly. “I didn’t choose the team, Ino.”

“That’s what you _always_ say, Shikamaru. But you know that if you said one word to Naruto about it, he’d happily agree to let you change the configuration of the team for this mission.” This, too, is a well-trodden road. They could walk it in their sleep and that is what makes Ino angriest. For all that he knows it hurts her, Shikamaru never does anything about it, despite having the Hokage’s unquestioning confidence. She perches on the edge of the kitchen table with an exasperated sigh. She can practically say the next words in time with him.

“Ino, why do you even want to go? Aren’t you already overworked, between the hospital and the Interrogation division and helping your mom with the shop?” His hand moves unconsciously to the breast pocket of his flak jacket and falls again—he is clearly itching to go outside and smoke. The nicotine withdrawal is doubtless worsening his mood by the minute.

But she is not done; she grips her hands white-knuckled against the table’s edge. “I just want to be sure you’re _safe_ , Shikamaru. It worries me when I’m not there to watch your back.”

“Troublesome…” he murmurs, even as he moves across the room toward her. “The other members of the squad will make sure I’m safe. Just like I’ll do for them.”

“Oh, _I’m_ troublesome? Just because I want to keep you from getting hurt?” She hurls the words at him, waving her hand dismissively. “Fine, I guess I’ll just care less about your wellbeing.”

He catches her wrist as it starts to fall back to her side. “Ino, you’re being unfair. You know that’s not what I’m suggesting.”

She snatches her hand back from him, breaking the loose hold. “Oh, but of course it’s perfectly okay for _you_ to keep me from going on missions you think are going to be too dangerous. Certainly no double standard there.”

She has hit a nerve—she can see it in the way his jaw tightens, in the way he clenches and unclenches his fists. He only ever interfered once, but once is enough. She has not let him forget it.

Shikamaru takes a long breath, in through the nose and out through the mouth. He squares himself in front of her and places his hands to either side, so that he is leaning over her where she sits.

“This isn’t going anywhere, Ino, and we both know it. For now, I think we should table this.”

She turns her face away from him—an overdramatic gesture, maybe, but she feels justified in it. “Fine.”

“Ino.” There is exasperation in his tone, but a hint of gentleness as well. “Look at me, would you?”

She swivels back slowly. His face is inches from her own; his eyebrow raised in a way that is infuriatingly handsome.

“Tabled or not, I’m still angry with you.”

“I know.”

Adrenaline still sings through her veins. She cannot decide if the fullness in her chest is overwhelming rage or overwhelming love. _Both_ , she thinks. They are both so stubborn—too stubborn to relent on this one issue. And after everything, he has the gall to stand in front of her and look at her like _that_.

He opens his mouth to say something else, but she cuts him off, balling her fists in the collar of his jacket and jerking him forward. He barely has time to get out a syllable of mild surprise before she has pressed her lips to his in a bruising kiss.

That surprise lasts only a moment before he responds in kind. One arm wraps around her abdomen, flirting with the hem of her shirt as he pulls her flush against him; the other hand traces a path down her thigh to the knee and back up again, wrapping her leg around his waist.

She breaks the kiss long enough to say, “This doesn’t mean I’m not still mad at you.”

He laughs breathily, pressing a long kiss to a spot just under her jawline. “Oh, I know.”

Her lips find his again and she runs fingers along his chest until they close around the zipper of his vest. That is the first to go, followed shortly by his shirt. She takes a moment to admire the lean muscles of his arms and torso, but only a moment because he is kissing his way up the soft skin of her neck and his hand slides beneath her skirt, looping in the fishnets to pull them down and over her knees, leggings and underwear both. She hears a quiet rip as they are tossed to the side, and she brings her lips close to his ear. “You’re going to pay for that, you know.”

“I counted on it.”

His breath whispers along her skin as his hands move up to tackle the buttons of her shirt. He is not moving nearly fast enough for her liking, and she moves her fingers between his to release the clasps in quick succession, shrugging the fabric back and over her shoulders to pile on the table. Her nipples are hard beneath the lace of her bra; she bites her lip against a little sigh of pleasure as his thumb brushes the sensitive skin and he kisses his way down her cleavage.

His other hand has moved back to draw swirls along the inside of her thighs, ghosting but not quite touching the space between them.

“You’re teasing me,” she accuses, and she can feel his chuckle reverberating low through his whole chest.

“Yeah, well…” His voice is husky, roguish. “Maybe I’m still a little mad at you too.”

He strokes her then, a little circle in and out, and she bucks against his hand. She is slick around his fingers as he dips once, twice, again and again as he finds the places that make her shudder under his touch. She is trying to focus on too much at once: the feeling of his hand between her legs, the feeling of kissing him, the places where her skin touches his, but she is beginning to see stars. She slides her hands down the length of his chest, fumbling to unbutton his pants. She can feel the length of him, hard against her hand.

But then he hits that perfect spot and she is lost to herself for an instant. Her legs go weak and she is clutching for purchase, her nails digging into his shoulder as she moans against his mouth.

“You bastard,” she gasps just before another ecstatic whine escapes her.

He only kisses her harder, but she can feel the smile curving his lips. “You started it.”

“And I intend to finish it.”

She finally succeeds at hooking her fingers in his waistband, pulling it down over his hips. He takes the hint as she pushes toward him, giving one last satisfying stroke before he traces now-wet fingers back up the line of her thigh. Impatient, she pitches forward and sinks onto him, earning herself a deep, growling groan as he settles inside of her.

It takes them a moment to find their rhythm, but then they are moving in near-perfect synchronicity, both gasping, the frustration and adrenaline and lust mixing to form some strange, heady euphoria. His fingers move once more to caress that knee-weakening spot. She has just enough time to clutch at the edge of the table with one hand, the other buried in his hair, before she loses herself completely, stars wheeling bright behind her eyelids.

Later, when clothes have been retrieved and they have both come down from the high, they sit side by side, backs to the kitchen wall, her head leaning against his shoulder.

“We’re going to have to clean that table within an inch of its life.”

“Or burn it.”

“Then we’d have to settle on a new one.” She pokes him in the shoulder.

He gives her a wry smile. “Oh good. Something else to argue about.”

She can’t suppress a giggle.

“If that’s true, we’re going to be going through a lot of tables.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh... I don't usually write smut. Or like... at all. What possessed me to write it now? Who knows? Anyway. Here's this. Still trying to catch up for the couple days of writing I missed, but I'll get there eventually.


	9. fluke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 9: fluke
> 
> The first time can be considered a fluke. Any more than that, though…
> 
> It started, as it almost always does, with a challenge.
> 
> “Fine then. If you’re so smart, genius boy, tell me what I’m mad about.”

**9. _fluke_**

The first time can be considered a fluke. Any more than that, though…

It started, as it almost always does, with a challenge.

Ino has rolled into training like a storm cloud, the potential for devastation radiating from her. Choji knows better than to comment on it, but Shikamaru—dry, sarcastic, fate-tempting Shikamaru—cannot leave well enough alone.

“Are you going to tell us what’s wrong? Or do we have to guess?”

Ino rounds on him and she knows that _he_ knows he has made a mistake. The _why the hell did I say that_ is written plainly on his face. But that does not absolve him of the consequences.

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

He holds up his hand—as if that will save him from her wrath. “Just that you’re clearly upset about something. And it’s going to be better for all of us if we discuss it before we start sparring.”

Ino grits her teeth—partially because she’s annoyed, but mostly because he’s right. She’s not going down without a fight though.

“Fine then. If you’re so smart, genius boy, tell me what I’m mad about.”

He doesn’t even hesitate. “You’re mad at Sakura because she started training with Lady Tsunade and she didn’t tell you.”

Ino’s mouth falls open. She sputters a little—she is angry, but more than anything, she’s impressed. Shikamaru is smart. He is strategic. He is _not_ a mind reader. At least she was willing to believe that before this very moment.

“That was a fluke.” She crosses her arms, turns her back on him. “You made a lucky guess. Let’s just train, okay?”

But curiosity plagues her through the end of the training day and into the next. It was so oddly specific. And now, it begins to take the shape of a competition in her mind. If she can catch Shikamaru in a wrong answer…

Her personal quest drags across the weeks, and every day, she grows more baffled and more frustrated as Shikamaru somehow manages to guess, day after day, what she is thinking.

Finally, nearly a month and a half later as they are walking home from delivering a mission report, she asks him.

“How do you _always_ know?”

He does not even register her question at first. Then, slowly, he glances over his shoulder at her. “Know what?”

“What I’m thinking. Or what I’m upset about. You always know, no matter how ridiculous or weird. How do you _do_ that, Shikamaru? Do you do that to other people too?”

He turns his attention back to the road ahead of him. His answer is mumbled, and she almost doesn’t catch it. “No. Just you.”

“And why am _I_ so special that I get separated out for this unique honor?” She cannot keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

“Well, for one, you never stop _asking_ me,” he retorts, and she flushes a little. “As for how I do it…” He shrugs his shoulders. He’s seemed to hold them a little straighter ever since he was promoted to chunin. “It’s not that hard. I just know _you_ , Ino.”

He keeps walking, but the statement stops her in her tracks. The past weeks take on a new clarity in her mind. Here she was ready to ascribe it to some uncanny ability, but the answer has always been simpler than that. Despite all the grousing and rolled eyes and complaints about how loud she is… he was paying attention, after all.

Her heart stutters in her chest with the realization. For the first time, she feels self-conscious around him.

He has finally realized she is not beside him, and he turns in the road, squinting at her. “Ino? What are you doing?”

She stares at him watching her, and her stomach flips.

“Hey Shikamaru,” she says, “tell me what I’m thinking right now.”

He scrutinizes her for a long moment. There is a vague hint of surprise in his voice when he finally admits: “I don’t know.”

To be honest, she is not quite sure herself. She only knows that something has shifted, something fundamental.

But she laughs softly to herself, skipping forward to catch up with him.

“Well, maybe you don’t know _everything_ about me after all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost caught up! Honestly, this prompt was actually supposed to be day 6, but it gave me so much trouble that I got stuck for four days trying to wrap my head around it. I'm still not sure if I'm totally happy with the result, but I do always love writing those little moments of quiet realization in a relationship. 
> 
> Also, just thank you so much to anyone who has left kudos and especially reviews. Your kind words mean so much to me.


	10. habit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 10: habit
> 
> He has lost track of how many times he has heard the words, or some variation, fall from her lips.
> 
> “When are you going to quit that disgusting habit?”

**10. _habit_**

He has lost track of how many times he has heard the words, or some variation, fall from her lips.

“When are you going to quit that disgusting habit?”

The first thousand or so times, at least, were all directed Asuma-sensei. And Shikamaru has to admit, it was kind of funny to see a fully grown man be cowed by a twelve-year-old girl. Plenty of people ribbed Asuma about his smoking habit, but he never looked quite as guilty as when Ino laid into him about it. With years of distance from that first painful shock of his death, Shikamaru remembers it with something like fondness.

He is somewhat less fond of it being directed at him.

“I thought you were going to quit.”

 _Shit._ It is pouring rain, so he couldn’t go far from the entrance of the restaurant. And now he is pinned by the accusing gaze of his former teammate as the smoke swirls around him, mixing with the low-hanging mist.

“’S my life, Ino.” He remarks for lack of any better excuse. And despite current appearances, he has been smoking _less._ Only sometimes his nerves get the better of him, and old habits die hard.

She leans against the wall next to him, waving a hand to disperse the smoke in front of her face. He politely directs the smoke from his next drag away from her.

“I know it’s your life, and that’s why I worry. No woman’s going to want to kiss a man with a mouth like an ash tray.”

He snorts. _Of all the things to fixate on._ “Yeah, that’s definitely the worst possible consequence of my smoking habit,” he says dryly. “Besides, it worked out fine for Asuma-sensei.”

It is her turn to laugh. “It’s hilarious that you think Kurenai wouldn’t have made him quit the moment Mirai was born. Sooner even, if....”

She lets the words hang unspoken and it sobers them both a little. They will never really know what their teacher would or wouldn’t have done, had he lived to see his child born. Too much speculation just leads down a painful, all-too-familiar path.

“Anyway,” Ino continues, trying to clear the air, “you ought to at least try to quit.”

“I _am_ trying.” Shikamaru stubs out the remnants of the cigarette and flicks it into the trash can when he is sure the embers have cooled. “It’s not going to happen overnight.”

Ino gives him a long, assessing look. He can see thoughts swimming in the ocean of her eyes. Finally, she turns back to look at the rain, at the collected drops pouring in small rivers off the eaves.

“If you don’t go back inside soon, Choji’s gonna overeat. You know you’re the only one he really listens to.”

The innocuous statement is laced with unspoken questions, the foremost of which is _are you okay_?

Shikamaru knew the moment he stood up that he had excused himself too hastily. He just couldn’t bear any more of the crushing sadness, of trying to act normal on the anniversary of the start of the Shinobi World War. His friends are in there drinking to lost comrades and living while they can, but all he can see is ghosts.

He knows he has been quiet for too long, because Ino has that particular downturn to her mouth that says she is worrying. And with her, worrying so often leads to meddling, a thought that is too troublesome to entertain. 

“Am I going to have to drag you back in there myself? Because I will.” She tugs playfully at his arm, but it is half-hearted at best. “Or am I going to have to have a talk about your little habit with Yoshino?”

 _That_ is devious. He narrows his eyes. “You wouldn’t dare rat me out to my mother.”

She shrugs in faux nonchalance. “I might. Yoshino loves me.”

“She does,” Shikamaru admits grudgingly. “Look, I’ll be back in a minute, okay. Swear it on Choji’s dinner bill.”

“Which you’ll be paying if you don’t keep your word.” Ino sticks her tongue out in a childish fashion and he rolls his eyes, though it is contradicted by the hint of a smile that keeps trying to creep onto his lips.

“Go and bicker with Sakura some more, or whatever you were doing before you came out here.”

Ino takes a step toward the door, but then she stops. She turns around to lay a gentle hand on his arm. The touch startles him—Ino is not usually the gentle type.

“We’ll be waiting for you.” Heedless of the remnants of smoke in the air around him, she stands on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. “Don’t be too long, okay?”

Then she is gone in a swish of blonde ponytail before he even has time to raise his hand to his cheek. He almost believes he imagined it, like a phantom of the smoke and mist, but the place where she touched him burns like a brand on his skin.

He plucks the last two cigarettes from his pack, staring at them in his hand. He crushes his fingers around them and throws the mangled remnants in the trash.

Maybe it is time to form a new habit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was actually supposed to be my prompt for tomorrow, but I had a minor epiphany, so I decided to write it today. And with that, I should be back to writing one a day! Even managed to get it in before it hit midnight here. 
> 
> This might be my favorite I've written so far. My brief departure into smut was fun, but angst is where I really thrive.


	11. spinning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 11: spinning
> 
> “I think they’re gone.” He could barely hear her whisper over the sound of his own pulse thundering in his ears. “But we should wait here for a second.”
> 
> “Y-yeah.” His head was reeling and he was reminded suddenly of the roulette wheel spinning on its axis, the colors all blurring together.

**11. _spinning_**

Shikamaru watched the roulette wheel spin and wondered yet again how he’d gotten himself roped into this.

“No more bets!” The dealer drew her hand across the table, glaring down an old man trying to sneak in another chip at the last minute.

Shikamaru took another drag of his cigarette. The ball had begun to slow in its circle around the wheel and everyone around the table craned forward, trying to get a glimpse of where it might land. Shikamaru leaned forward a little too, not wanting to seem out of place, though mentally he was scanning the room, waiting for a glimpse of blonde hair or the sound of a familiar laugh.

_Where_ is _she_?

The ball slowed and dropped into a slot on the outside of the wheel. As the dealer dropped the marker, a chorus of cheers and groans went up all around him. Shikamaru tried to look chagrined—people would pay less attention to a man who’d just lost.

This was meant to be a simple mission—just a two-man squad, tasked with interrupting a handoff between a smuggler and the leader of a local bandit gang. But things had gotten complicated when they’d gotten to the drop site at the specified time and no one had shown. They’d waited for hours, but it yielded no results. Maybe someone had tipped them off; maybe they just decided to find a more convenient location. Whatever the reason, they’d end up having to track the leader to this ostentatious gambling den, hoping to recover a stolen artifact from him here.

Shikamaru supposed it could be worse—he could be here with Tsunade.

As the dealer began to sweep away the chips, his attention fixed on a flurry of movement across the room. A man in a tacky suit was sitting down at one of the dice tables near the entrance and there, right at his elbow, was a stunning woman in a form-fitting black dress with long blonde hair loose down her back.

_Goddammit, Ino._

The whole point was not to call attention to themselves, but there she was at the center of the limelight, the prettiest girl in the room.

Of course, how could she not be? She was always the prettiest girl in any room. And in a dress like that, well…

He brought the cigarette back to his lips, taking a long drag and letting the smoke out in a long, slow breath to steady his nerves. Thoughts like that were stupid, especially now. Now, he just had to focus on keeping a cool head until Ino gave him the signal that she’d procured the item and manage to get them both safely out the door. He hoped that didn’t mean causing a distraction, but knowing Ino, he couldn’t rule anything out.

At the roulette table, the dealer was taking bets again, gamblers elbowing one another out of the way to place their chips. He kept some of his attention on the table across the room, but the rest he focused on the jostling and joking, on the click of the wheel as it began to spin on its track. Red, black, and the occasional flicker of green whirled by in a haze.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a momentary flash. No more than a second, but he slowly raised his head while all the others were focused on the turn of the wheel.

_There._ Tucked into Ino’s hair was a shining silver clip that hadn’t been there a moment ago. That meant she’d successfully pickpocketed the man and it was time for them to leave.

He waited until the wheel stopped spinning again and the ball came to rest. He feigned cursing his luck, hoping that anyone who might be watching him would think he had lost, and then he slipped away from table, steering through the crowd of bodies and the haze of smoke to reach the door.

Outside in the hallway, he found a familiar figure leaning up against the wall, twirling a strand of hair idly around her finger. When she saw him, she crossed her arms, her face adopting an expression of annoyance.

“What took you so long?” Ino hissed as he passed her. She fell into step beside him. “I’ve been waiting out here for ages.”

“It wasn’t that long,” he muttered.

He opened the outer door for her, and they strolled out into the night, every once in a while looking over one another’s shoulders. When they were far enough away, he chanced asking: “So you’ve got it?”

She rolled her eyes at him, subtly tapping her hand to her thigh where a pouch was strapped beneath her skirt. “Of course I do, dummy. Did you think I was just going to— _shit_!”

Before he could turn to ask what she’d seen, she grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him into an alley off the main road.

“Wha—”

She pressed a hand to his mouth, cutting him off. She nodded her head gently in the direction of the road, where two voices were growing louder. “Those guys were sitting at Boss Ganju’s table.”

His eyes widened in realization. Slowly, she lowered her hand.

“—so quick to fall for a pretty face. If I were in charge…”

“Well, you aren’t. And the boss sent us out here to find her, so better shut your yap and start looking.”

“Shit shit shit.” Ino was so close that her breath ghosted over his collarbone as she spoke, and he shivered. Then she looked up at him, a gleam of inspiration in her eye. “I have an idea! Just follow my lead.”

“What are you plan—”

But there was no time to finish that thought, as she yanked him in front of her so that he blocked view of her, grabbed his face, and pulled him into a kiss.

He couldn’t say how long it lasted—it could have been a minute or an hour. He only knew that he was kissing _Ino_ , her fingers buried in his hair, his hands finding the small of her waist, her tongue in his mouth.

He couldn’t imagine _that_ was an essential part of the plan.

And then she broke the kiss, though she didn’t step away from him, peering over his shoulder.

“I think they’re gone.” He could barely hear her whisper over the sound of his own pulse thundering in his ears. “But we should wait here for a second.”

“Y-yeah.” His head was reeling and he was reminded suddenly of the roulette wheel spinning on its axis, the colors all blurring together.

“Hey! Shikamaru?” A gentle hand smacked his cheek and he came back to himself. Ino’s palm rested lightly on his face, and she gave him a strange, sideways smile. “You okay?”

“Sure.” He cleared his throat, glad that the shadows of the alley helped to hide his blush, though he was sure the heat was burning through her fingertips. “Should we get going?”

Her grin widened and she patted his cheek again. “Sure. Let’s go. But better keep an eye out.”

She sauntered past him, her hand just brushing his. After a dazed moment, Shikamaru followed her out of the alleyway and into the night, his head still spinning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have my roommate to thank for the idea behind this one. I was struggling to do something with spinning, and she was the one who suggested the idea of a roulette wheel. This is what grew out of it. I now know way more about roulette than I ever thought I would!


	12. greeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 12: greeting
> 
> An evolution of greetings.

**12. _greeting_**

She flings herself at him, his name a squeal of excitement.

“Shikamaruuuuuuu!”

He tries to raise his hands to his ears to block out the noise of her chatter, but his arms are trapped under the crush of her hug.

“Let me go, Ino.”

She releases him and sticks her tongue out with an exaggerated flounce. Even at five, her glare is formidable.

“You’re no fun, Shikamaru. I’m going to go find someone else to play with.”

He hopes that is true, but he knows eventually she will circle back around. So much for his peace and quiet.

* * *

“Akimichi Choji. Nara Shikamaru. Yamanaka Ino. You will be squad ten under the command of Sarutobi Asuma.”

“ _Ugh_.” Long gone are the days of effusive childhood greetings. Ino does not bother to disguise her distaste as she looks over her new teammates. “Why do I get stuck with the losers?”

 _Hello to you too, Ino_ , he thinks. For now, he puts his head back on the desk and thinks of the bright summer sky. This is only temporary.

* * *

“Shikamaru!”

He is not quick enough to dodge Ino’s punch, taking the full brunt of it on his upper arm. He grunts as Asuma and Choji look on in helpless bemusement.

“You won! Where did that even come from?!”

He does not glance over his shoulder at the Sound kunoichi being carried out of the test room on a stretcher. “I just didn’t want to lose to a girl.”

That only serves to earn him another punch. He thinks he might have preferred the days when she thought he was just a loser.

* * *

He turns the corner, and she is there, breathless at the end of the hospital corridor, and he cannot bear to look at her. She approaches him like she would a wounded animal. Her eyes are red-rimmed, and he knows she has been crying; he hopes she does not notice the same signs in him.

It is a long moment before she speaks, and when she does, her voice wavers. Nothing like the strong, indomitable girl he knows.

“Is he…” Ino swallows hard, her hands white-knuckled clutching the bouquet of fresh flowers she has brought from her parents’ shop.

“He’s—” Shikamaru’s voice breaks, and he has to clear his throat and start again. “He’s in the recovery room. They got there in time.”

They both know Choji is not yet out of the woods, and no matter how you examine it, the mission is a failure. The guilt weighs down his shoulders. He will never outlive the sight of his best friend’s body, drained of all signs of life.

“Good. Good.” Her voice shakes, then grows stronger. She has always been the strongest of them.

As she passes him in the hallway, she lays a gentle hand on his shoulder, just briefly.

“I’m glad you’re safe.”

He thinks, maybe, she should have punched him instead.

* * *

When he arrives at the door of her house in his flak jacket, a travel bag on his back, she is already waiting for him.

“So? What’s the plan?”

“We’re heading out now. Choji is meeting us at the gate.”

“I’ll be back in five minutes.”

Her eyes are too bright and her cheeks flushed—her tears are not yet fully spent. But her shoulders are straight and her will is strong. He knows already that she would follow him into hell, if that is what it took to avenge what they have lost.

They set out together, the three of them, in the early dawn light. He feels stronger knowing he has them beside him.

* * *

They meet outside the newly rebuilt façade of Yakiniku Q on the morning of the memorial.

She is thin and tired and scarred. He had expected her to want to attend with her mother, but she requested specifically for him to meet her here. In a strange way, he understands it—he is the only other person who knows the exact shape of this loss. It is the size of an impact crater on a distant battlefield, and it will be a long time before that void fills.

“Hey, Shikamaru.” Her smile is watery, her face gaunt and pale.

“Hey, Ino.”

For the first time in a long time, he is the one to move to her. She throws herself into his arms and buries her head against his chest, quaking with the effort of keeping her tears contained.

He does not ask her to let go—he finds, after all these years, that he does not want her to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the simplest prompts are the ones I struggle with the most. I started drafts of two other ideas before I settled on this one. I'd always wanted it to be about the way that the greetings between them change over the years, but I couldn't quite get the right angle for it. This series of little vignettes is where we ended up.


	13. fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 13: fall
> 
> He was never meant to be the one falling.

He was never meant to be the one falling.

For years, he has been simply the arms that catch her. Her hands form the symbols, her mind soars away, and he is there to support her as her body goes limp. It is his duty, as her teammate and as her friend. When it turned from duty to essential, he does not know.

His father tried to warn him in his gruff, enigmatic way. As they sat around the dinner table the night after he got his team assignment, Shikamaru grudgingly detailed his first day of training and Shikaku snorted into his miso.

“The Yamanaka girl, eh? That one’s going to be a handful.”

Shikamaru did not need to be told this. He knew Ino—loud and bossy and brash, never afraid to go after what she wanted. As a child who only ever aimed for mediocrity, he could not imagine a world in which he could tolerate her, let alone imagine a world in which she is the sun around which he revolves.

Only… only then there are the days that he stays with her body until her mind safely returns, and those startling, bright eyes open again, and for moments at a time, the world is composed of only the two of them.

And he soon discovers that, try as he might, there are times when he cannot catch her. Every time a fight with Sakura rips her apart from the inside out. Every time Sasuke fails to live up to the impossible expectations she has set for him.

When Asuma dies, he is too busy trying to hang on himself to catch her as well. It is a regret that he will hold in his chest for years to come.

But Ino, he has learned, is capable of catching herself. It may be an upward climb, pulling herself hand over hand against the impossible weight of gravity, but she will emerge triumphant at the summit, given time. It takes him a long time to realize that he is looking up at her from the ground, and that the tightness in his chest is not just fear, but also something stranger and messier and _more_.

By the time he knows he has fallen, she is impossibly high above him, the sunlight catching golden in her hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This feels unfinished, but I kind of ran out of steam on this one. So... little bit of a broody drabble?


	14. scab

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 14: scab
> 
> “Kids are gonna get scraped up sometimes. It’s a hazard of being a kid. It might scab a little, but she’s gonna be fine. She probably won’t even remember this in a month. She’ll just remember that she got to spend the day with Uncle Shikamaru and she got a pretty flower. It’s all okay. Okay?”

**14. _scab_**

When Shikamaru agreed to watch Mirai for an afternoon, he had anticipated being responsible for keeping the kid fed and making sure she took her nap on time. What he had not anticipated was an overeager toddler breaking the hold he hand on her hand and barreling ahead of him with reckless abandon as they walked one of the quieter streets of Konoha. When Mirai fell, scraped her leg, and opened her mouth to unleash a truly earsplitting wail, Shikamaru found himself at a total loss.

So he did what he always did when he was in over his head—found someone more equipped to deal with the issue.

He was lucky that they were only a block from the flower shop, and luckier still that Ino was working that day. When he opened the door, sobbing child in one arm, Ino was halfway through an arrangement of pink peonies. As she took in the sight of them, her mouth opened in an “o” of surprise, then immediately pursed back into a frown. Before he could even begin to explain, she was stripping away her work gloves to lay them aside.

“Let me wash my hands.” She called instructions over her shoulder as she moved toward the sink. “Set her up on the counter and try to keep her distracted, okay?”

The minute or so that it took Ino to wash her hands felt like an eternity, as Shikamaru failed to redirect Mirai’s attention and contemplated the vast, empty chasm that was his knowledge of children and how to soothe them. He had never considered being an only child to be much of a disadvantage until now. When Ino reappeared at his side, all bright smiles and soft voice, he had never been so relieved in his entire life.

“Oh, sweetie, what happened?” Ino held out a hand for Mirai’s pudgy fingers to grab hold of. “Did you get a boo-boo? Auntie Ino’s going to get you all cleaned up, okay?”

Mirai hiccuped, fat tears gathered on her eyelashes, but the wailing seemed to have stopped for now. Her attention was now focused entirely on Ino, on the gentle, reassuring sound of her voice and the hypnotic sway of her long blonde ponytail. Shikamaru hadn’t realized Ino even _could_ sound like that. She’d certainly never been that gentle with any injury he’d ever had.

“Shikamaru, go grab the first aid kit that’s under the counter. Bottom shelf on the left.” So much for sweetness. Her tone was all business now, and she risked breaking eye contact with Mirai for a moment to glare at him over her shoulder. “ _Now_ , please.”

Despite her directions, it took him a moment to locate the box, buried behind spare pots and trowels. When he returned, Ino was leaned forward over the counter, a smile on her face as she listened to Mirai babble about pretty flowers through hiccups. The child was clutching a bright yellow daisy between her palms, her gaze transfixed. While Mirai was distracted, Ino made quick work of cleaning up the scratch and setting a bandage over it. By the time Mirai looked up again, her face filled with vague confusion, the wound was fully dressed.

“See? All better.”

“All better.” Mirai parroted, then her face broke out in a grin. She held her arms out to Ino, who scooped her up off the counter and into her arms. The little girl giggled as Ino spun her around in a circle.

Shikamaru was so absorbed in watching how deftly Ino handled the whole situation that he missed the point when Ino started directing her words at him again.

“Shikamaru? Anyone in there?” She snapped her fingers in front of his face with her free hand as her other arm supported Mirai. He startled at the sound. “What were you even doing?”

“We were just walking!” He protested, hands up. “She just tripped!”

Ino rolled her eyes, the expression out of Mirai’s sight as she laid her head against Ino’s shoulder. “Well, I guess you did the right thing by bringing her to me for help. I swear, the fact that you don’t even know the most basic field medicine…”

“It’s not that I don’t _know_ it,” he grumbled, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I just kind of… I dunno, panicked. I was supposed to be keeping her safe and then she got hurt and…” He petered out, realizing suddenly how tight his chest felt.

Asuma had asked one thing of him— _one thing_ —and he was failing at it on the most basic level.

“I’m sorry. I should have been more careful. I didn’t mean to bother you at work.”

Ino must have seen the change in his expression, because her own suddenly softened, her eyes narrowed in concern. Mirai shifted against her shoulder, eyes half-closed as she started to drowse.

“Hey.” Ino reached out and grabbed his hand. “Kids are gonna get scraped up sometimes. It’s a hazard of being a kid. It might scab a little, but she’s gonna be fine. She probably won’t even remember this in a month. She’ll just remember that she got to spend the day with Uncle Shikamaru and she got a pretty flower. It’s all okay. Okay?”

He looked down at his hand in hers, biting the inside of his cheek. Rationally, he knew all that, but remembering how distressed she’d been, how helpless he felt… it didn’t _feel_ okay.

“Shika.” Ino squeezed his hand, almost painfully, until he was forced to look up at her. “Do _not_ beat yourself up about this. When Asuma-sensei…” She swallowed hard. “When he asked you to look after her, he did not mean that you had to keep her from ever getting hurt in her life, and you know that. I am _not_ going to let you get all morose about this. Or should I try to cheer Mirai up by telling her about that time during the Chunin exams when her beloved uncle got pushed into the stadium and fell flat on his face right before his match?”

His eyes widened and then narrowed. “You wouldn’t. Besides, Choji told me you didn’t even see that happen, you thought that I had jumped down there because—”

Shikamaru stopped, taking in her wicked grin and dancing eyes. The tightness in his chest, so strong a moment ago, had loosened.

He heaved a sigh. “You’re evil, you know that?”

Her grin only broadened. “But you _do_ feel better, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he muttered. Her hand was still clasped in his, her palm warm. His stomach flipped as he realized how long they’d been sitting that way without even noticing. He avoided her gaze as he said: “Thank you, Ino.”

“Anytime.” Her hand pulled away so she could readjust Mirai on her shoulder, but when he raised his eyes, her expression was still fixed on him, her mouth curved in a softened smile. “Besides, we make a pretty good team, don’t you think?”

Shikamaru found he couldn’t disagree with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I once again have my roommate to thank for the concept behind this one. I was really stuck, so I read off my prompt list to her and she fixed on this one, asking if there was a kid involved that could be incorporated somehow. From there, this little piece practically wrote itself.
> 
> I had intended number 14 to be something for Valentine's Day, but yesterday was kind of hard, and I think I like this better anyway. Hope you all enjoy it too.


	15. gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 15: gift
> 
> "What do you gift to the girl who has everything?"

**15. _gift_**

_What do you gift to the girl who has everything?_ Though he has wrestled with the question a dozen times before, never has it felt as urgent as it does now, the most romantic holiday looming before them.

They have never had a proper anniversary. When would they have started counting? The first time she kissed him? (Five years old, in front of their parents and everyone at a gathering of the three families because she wanted to know what it was like. He was red as a tomato for the rest of the night.) The first time they _really_ kissed? (Ten years later, on a rain-soaked training ground, nearly giving him a heart attack right there on the spot. They didn’t talk about it again for another two years.) The first time he slipped up in the middle of an argument and told her he loved her? (Two months ago, and she swears she will never let him live it down even as she kisses him senseless.)

They have nothing even beginning to resemble a first date—how can you distinguish between date and everyday when the other person is an immovable fixture in your life? Theirs is a love of constant proximity, from cradle to classroom, training ground to battlefield. Of moments stolen between missions, bickering in restaurant booths, hands held on the walk between their houses, fond glances when they think the other isn’t looking. Never long enough. 

Flowers are out of the question. Leaving aside the fact that her family owns the village’s main flower shop, there is nothing he could bring her that she hasn’t seen a thousand times over. Jewelry, too, seems inadequate. Nothing will ever rival the significance of the earrings gifted to them by Asuma. And she has never needed any accessory to make her beautiful. Chocolate is a minefield he’d rather not hazard.

So when the evening arrives in sunset streaks, it is just him on the doorstep, an outstretched hand and a racing pulse. She is radiant in a dress of summer-sky blue, her hair long and loose down her back. She threads her fingers through his and he immerses himself in the sound of her voice, letting it pull him down familiar village paths and out into the canopy of the woods. The trees fill with night music and still they continue walking, though he thinks a dozen times that he could just pause right there and stop that pretty mouth with a kiss and keep kissing her until the world dissolved around them.

The field is sprawling, perfect for stargazing as the breeze catches the grass in its sway. The faintest hint of chill lingers in the air, and she curls into him, their hands still twined together.

When she looks at him, her blue eyes are luminous.

“What is it?” He asks.

“Can’t I just look at you?”

“If you want.” She has looked at him a thousand times in their lifetime together, but he swears he will never get used her looking at him that way.

“Thank you,” she says.

He raises an eyebrow. “For what?”

“For this. For you.” She brings their twined hands to her lips, brushing a kiss against his knuckles. “It’s so hard to get a quiet moment, but this is… perfect.”

His mind is always full of too many things at once. But the litany of _you are ethereal_ and _how did I get so lucky_ and _I think I have loved you all my life_ cedes to silence for just that moment as he presses his lips to hers and just breathes.

_What do you gift to the girl who has everything?_ He’s still not sure he has the answer, but he is ready to spend the rest of his life finding out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was supposed to be the Valentine's Day piece. Years and years ago (like, about a decade ago at this point), I wrote a series of Valentine's Day oneshots for various pairings in this fandom. As I was working on this yesterday, I went down the rabbit hole of past years and was shocked to find that I had somehow neglected to write one for ShikaIno. I think I did start one, but then it didn't go to plan, or that was a bad year for trying to write romance, or something happened and it never got posted. I'd have to dig up old flash drives to even find it at this point. This isn't in quite the same vein as those long-ago oneshots, but it's something.


	16. drip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 16: drip
> 
> "If her love for Sasuke was a devastating flood, her love for Shikamaru is a slow, steady drip."

**16. _drip_**

If her love for Sasuke was a devastating flood, her love for Shikamaru is a slow, steady drip.

It is easy to let it escape her notice at first—one slow droplet at a time, it is not quick to fill the reservoir of her heart. It becomes the white noise background to her days. He teases her about cutting her hair short to compete with Sakura, but then compliments the way it frames her face. _Drip._ He frets about her in his grumpy way after a particularly close call on a mission. _Drip._ A maneuver perfectly executed, and she wins one of his rare genuine smiles, not the smirks he habitually wears. _Drip._

Tens of hundreds of little moments condense within her. It is only when the basin is full to bursting, sloshing at the rim, that she realizes how deeply she is sunk. 

In the aftermath of the battle with Hidan and Kakuzu, she is a mess. The helplessness, the fear and grief, have created an unstable tumult within her. She cannot escape how useless she felt as she stared down Kakuzu’s eldritch constructs.

And she cannot forget the way her heart stopped when Shikamaru volunteered to act as a distraction for Hidan, then took off without looking back. When his form later reappears through the trees, hands in pockets, unscathed, she cannot decide whether she wants to punch him or hug him. She defers the question and does neither, trying not to contemplate the enormity of the relief that has overcome her.

Only later, back in the safe confines of the village, does she dare to return to that feeling.

“Idiot!” She swats his arm, but he winces as though she struck him much harder. “Why did you go running off on your own like that? We said we were going to do this _together_ and then you just—” Coherence cedes to emotion as she tapers into a frustrated growl.

The training field is deserted save for the two of them and Choji’s drowsing form, worn out by the day’s sparring. They have been spending more time together like this since Asuma died, as if leaving the proximity of the other two for even a moment will result in some unimaginable catastrophe. An evening storm is rolling in across the treetops, shaking leaves as it draws near. Any moment now, the sky will open—they can feel it in the air.

“It was the most logical strategy. I could draw him away and keep him at a distance.” Shikamaru shrugs, his gaze distant.

_Drip._ The first little droplet of rain spatters across Ino’s cheek, and she wipes it away with the back of her hand.

“Besides, that left the two of you with Kakashi. He’s the more skilled shinobi. He was more help to you than I could ever have been.” 

_Drip._ Another drop between the fingers of her left hand where they are spread on the grass. Despite the rationality of his reasoning, her anger still burns hot within her, twisting her gut.

“And it worked out just fine. So there’s nothing to get worked up about.”

“You were being reckless, and I’ll get worked up if I want!” There is a fullness in her chest, too, that cannot be completely explained away by her ire. When she looks at him—the slope of his shoulders, the sharp line of his jaw, the grim set of his mouth—it pushes against her ribcage and she feels like she is holding in air, trying not to drown.

He cuts his gaze sideways at her, raising an eyebrow. There is a drop of rain caught just at the edge of his hairline. “You’re being weird, Ino.”

_Drip. Drip, drip._ The rain is falling faster now, a drop on her shoulders, another splattered across her nose.

She feels a strange, sudden surge of tears, and she doesn’t know quite where it came from.

“Fine. Whatever.” She turns her head away from him, but not before he catches sight of the glint of tears along her lower lashes. The rain is not falling hard enough yet to explain it away.

He grabs for her wrist. “Hey! Ino. I didn’t mean it like that. Just… tell me what’s wrong.”

A sheet of rain lets loose on them then, coating everything in a fine mist. Choji seems undisturbed by this change in the weather, only shifting slightly in his sleep. Ino freezes, just staring at the place where Shikamaru’s fingers have closed around her arm.

“What’s _wrong_ is that just because it did work out didn’t mean it had to. I know you think you know everything, but sometimes bad things happen that you can’t plan for.”

“You think I don’t know that?” He hisses. His grip tightens and then releases, and she can see the pain in the way he stiffens his jaw. “No matter how hard I try, nothing _ever_ goes to plan. It was all I could think to do. I was trying to keep you and Choji alive because that’s the most important thing.”

The tears have overwhelmed her now, forming fresh tracks on her cheeks. “ _You’re_ important too, Shikamaru. You think you’re the only one who gets to worry because you got made chunin first or some shit, but we get to worry about you too! You scared the _shit_ out of me.” She swipes at her eyes, though the tears have mixed so thoroughly with the rain at this point that it is a useless gesture. “You can’t just throw yourself away! You don’t get to go and die and leave us here! You’re not allowed, do you hear me? Because if you got yourself killed…” Somewhere inside her, a reservoir is cracking; her chest is wracked with sobs. “If you got yourself killed… That just can’t happen. I can’t lose you, too, Shikamaru.”

His eyes are wide, the whites clearly visible even in the shadows of the storm. For a moment, the only sounds on the field are the pounding of the rain and the sobs surging out of her.

“I-Ino…”

She sniffles, trying to regain some semblance of control over herself. She finds her voice again long enough to say: “I should probably get home. And you should take Choji home. He’s gonna get sick if he sleeps out here.” She stands up—she is all-over mud by now. She feels more than sees Shikamaru stand up next to her.

“Ino, listen, I didn’t mean—”

She whirls on him. “Look. You just mean a lot to me, okay? You’re not allowed to go anywhere. Not now.”

Their eyes are locked on one another’s, and that pressure in her chest is more insistent than ever—if she does not let it out, she thinks it may burst.

With shaking hands, she grabs Shikamaru’s face and pulls his lips down to hers.

In a lightning flash, she understands that strange feeling she’s been harboring.

She breaks the kiss, turning on her heel so fast that he has no time to react, still too dazed by the suddenness of it all. Ino runs, her hair and clothes soaked to the skin in moments.

_Drip._ The reservoir has cracked, and there is no going back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These little ficlets haven't necessarily been intended to all be in the same chronology. (They're not NOT in the same chronology, I just haven't been paying that much attention to continuity of timeline between one and the next.) But this one somehow turned into a fic about the first kiss mentioned a couple chapters ago in _gift_. *shrug* So here's that.


	17. wallet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 17: wallet
> 
> "Shikamaru was on his third drink by the time he realized his wallet was missing."

**17. _wallet_**

Shikamaru was on his third drink by the time he realized his wallet was missing.

He didn’t make a habit of drinking alone. In fact, he was meant to be drinking with Choji that night, but their meeting time had come and gone, and there was no sign of his best friend. About thirty minutes in, Kiba dropped by the bar with a message of apology—Choji was talking one of his genin students through a minor crisis, and he wasn’t sure when he’d be done, so maybe they should just take a rain check.

Kiba had no time to stop and chat, as he was already late to meet a date. He wasn’t that great of a drinking buddy anyway—he usually got about three beers in and wouldn’t stop talking about how he was going to surpass Naruto one of these days.

Under normal circumstances, Shikamaru would have just gone home. But home was a little too quiet lately, and he was already here, so he sat at the bar and nursed his beer, enjoying the opportunity to sit alone and think with a background of lively evening chatter. The second beer disappeared without him really noticing, but the third was about his limit—a few sips in, the room was comfortably hazy and he could feel a weariness settling over him that told him it was about time to go. Signaling the bartender for the check, he reached for his wallet in the usual pocket of his flak jacket only to come up empty.

_Troublesome._

Surely it couldn’t have been stolen from him as he sat here, at a bar in the heart of Konoha’s residential district. He tried to retrace his day, think about where he might have left it, but the recollections were elusive, blending together in a parade of paperwork and tiresome bureaucracy. And even if he could remember where he’d left his wallet, it didn’t solve the problem of the bill now sitting in front of him.

He’d sworn to himself that he’d never take up the habits of his father and Asuma, starting tabs at local establishments, but that was looking more and more like the only solution. He raised a reluctant hand to try to catch the bartender’s attention.

Then a familiar laugh met his ears, and he suddenly had another option. An option he was going to regret, but an option nonetheless.

It wasn’t hard to find Ino’s table—he just had to follow the sound of her overloud voice to the place where she was holding court. He wasn’t even halfway across the room when he heard his name.

“Shikamaruuuuuu! Come say hi!”

Ino sat in a booth with Sakura, Hinata, and Tenten, a truly startling quantity of food spread out before them. She waved at him until he was standing right by the table, as if he weren’t going to be able to find her without the gesture.

“Coming to crash girls’ night?” Ino grinned at him, the faintest flush already suffusing her cheeks, no doubt related to the bottle of sake in the center of the table. “Choji told me you two were going out drinking, but he didn’t tell me you were coming here! Where is he?”

“Caught up helping one of his students,” Shikamaru admitted. Pathetic as it was to be drinking alone, he’d learned long ago that lying to Ino was a headache waiting to happen. “We had to reschedule.”

Ino gave a knowing nod. It wouldn’t be the first time Choji had been detained by his kind heart. Their teammate was unfailingly caring—willing to help almost anyone he could, but particularly the young shinobi assigned to his tutelage.

But then Ino’s brow wrinkled.

“Wait, does that mean you’re here by yourself?! Shikamaru!” She grabbed his arm in a shockingly strong grip, jerking him toward the booth. “You should come sit with us! The girls won’t mind!”

Shikamaru wasn’t sure Hinata wouldn’t have objected even if she _did_ mind, but neither Tenten nor Sakura looked particularly amenable to this plan, and he was too tired to deal with even his overzealous teammate, much less all four women. He gently removed Ino’s hand from his wrist.

“Nah, it’s okay. I was headed out anyway. Just, uh…” He rubbed at the back of his neck—heat radiated from his skin, a combination of alcohol and anticipated shame. “Could I talk to you for a second? In private?”

Ino laughed and gave him a quizzical look, but she was already halfway to her feet. “Sure. Be right back, girls.”

“Ooooo! Don’t hurry on our account!” Tenten called after them like a schoolgirl, throwing a wink their way, and Shikamaru swore he heard Sakura giggling. He just rolled his eyes. Ino was a teammate—it wasn’t like he didn’t have perfectly good reasons to talk to her alone. But he couldn’t quite fight the instant awkwardness that accompanied such a juvenile provocation, and he put space between himself and Ino as he made his way back to the bar.

Ino only closed the gap again, looping her elbow through his. “You’re acting really weird all of a sudden. Don’t let their teasing get to you.” She paused to look over her shoulder and stick her tongue out at her friends, who were still giggling. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just, uh…” He stopped as they reached the bar, suddenly envisioning all the ways this could come back to bite him. Why, of all people, had he decided it was a good idea to ask _Ino_?

But his sudden silence must have alarmed her—some of the cheerfulness drained from her expression, replaced with genuine concern. “Shikamaru, what’s wrong? Are you sick? Do you need me to take you home? I can get my stuff and tell the girls—”

He held up a hand to stop her. “No, no, Ino, it’s… it’s nothing like that.” Great, now he’d gotten her actually worried. He was never going to hear the end of this. “I kind of… forgot my wallet. And I was wondering if you could spot me a few ryo to cover my tab. I’ll pay you back tomorrow, I swear.”

For a moment, Ino just stared at him, her mouth hanging slightly open. Then righteous fury lit her eyes.

“Are you _serious_? Shikamaru, you had me over here worrying that you were dying or something, and you just need to borrow _money_?! Ugh!” She grumbled to herself even as she started to dig her pockets for her own wallet. “I cannot believe you. You could’ve just asked me over there! I swear, sometimes you and Choji are like children…”

Shikamaru winced. “Sorry, Ino.”

“Here.” She stuffed a wad of bills into his hand. “Is that enough?”

Shikamaru did a double take when he looked at the denominations. “Ino, how much to do you think I had to drink? That’s way more than enough.” He handed about three-quarters of the bills back to her, flagging down the bartender to pass along the remainder.

Ino shoved her wallet back in her pocket, then looked pointedly up at him. “You’re _welcome._ ”

He heaved a sigh. _Never hear the end of this. Ever._ “Thank you, Ino.”

“You’re just lucky I was here! You could’ve been stuck here forever until some poor soul took pity on you.”

“I guess tonight that poor soul was you.” He couldn’t completely swallow a smirk. “Seriously, thanks, Ino. I’ll pay you back tomorrow, I swear.”

But Ino shook her head, her blonde ponytail rippling behind her. There was a calculating look in her eyes that he didn’t like one bit. “Oh no. For this?” She poked him right in the sternum, a little harder than was absolutely necessary. “For this, you’re buying me dinner next week.”

“Oh, I am, am I?” Shikamaru mumbled. _Of all the times to misplace my wallet._

Still… dinner with Ino wasn’t the worst consequence he could imagine from this little mishap.

“Yes, yes, you are.” Ino grinned at him, smug as a pampered cat. “I’m looking forward to it!”

She turned on her heel to saunter back to her table, calling back over her shoulder: “Let me know when our date is, Shikamaru!”

It was loud enough that he was pretty sure the entire restaurant heard. At the very least, it was enough to set off the table of girls in another fit of giggles.

_Troublesome woman._ “Bye, Ino.”

Shikamaru was halfway home when he reached for a cigarette and his fingers closed instead over the slim casing of his wallet, safe and sound in the wrong pocket.

He was never going to live this one down—but at least he had a dinner to look forward to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I managed to write something with minimal angst! Cookies for me! Anyway, I actually really like the way this one turned out. I'm sure Ino not-so-secretly loves having something to hold over his head.


	18. husk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 18: husk
> 
> "Ino had hoped that, upon realizing that they were having a nice dinner, Shino would save his grievance for another time. But clearly, either he hadn’t noticed or didn’t care, because he had now pulled a chair up to the end of the table and was glaring her down, spouting off some nonsense about his bugs."

**18. _husk_**

When Ino had told Shikamaru he owed her dinner, she hadn’t thought she’d have to specify she meant dinner with _just_ the two of them. But now she was thinking maybe she should have.

“This morning, I found the husks of nearly two dozen beetles. Two. Dozen.” Shino leaned forward, emphasizing each word with a jab to the tabletop. “My investigation had produced insignificant results, until I traced the remains back to the field on the eastern side of the village. And do you know what I found?”

Ino and Shikamaru had been seated for no less than five minutes when Shino came marching up to the table. Even as impossible as he always was to read, it was clear he was upset about something. Ino had hoped that, upon realizing that they were having a nice dinner, Shino would save his grievance for another time. But clearly, either he hadn’t noticed or didn’t care, because he had now pulled a chair up to the end of the table and was glaring her down, spouting off some nonsense about his bugs.

Ino balled her napkin up in her fist, tensing her fingers until her knuckles turned white. She cast a glance across the table, trying to catch Shikamaru’s eye, but he was studiously avoiding her gaze. If she didn’t know better, she would’ve sworn he was covering his mouth to hide a laugh.

“I can’t imagine, Shino, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

Shino pressed on, oblivious to Ino’s rising temper and Shikamaru’s barely contained mirth. “I found even more of our family’s precious insects, feasting on the flowers there and expiring not far away.”

He trailed off, giving her a significant look. Ino blinked back at him. “Aaaaand? How exactly is this my problem?”

“Has your family changed the pesticides that they use on their flowers recently?”

“My family’s… what?”

“We of the Aburame clan have established strict rules about what cannot and cannot be used on the plants around the village, and if your family has changed the formula they use on their flowers, it could be quite detrimental to not just the Aburame clan, but the safety of the entire village.”

Ino drummed her fingers on the table—by now, Shikamaru was “coughing” into his napkin to hide his laughter. “I’m sorry… so you came and interrupted my dinner because… because you think _my_ flowers are killing your bugs?” Just the thought of all those creepy little creatures made her skin crawl. “You couldn’t have waited to, I don’t know, schedule a meeting with my family? Or wait for the next local council?”

The look Shino gave her told Ino he had never heard a more ridiculous idea in his life. “Of course not. This is urgent. Besides,” He waved a hand at Shikamaru, “you’re just here with your teammate. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

Ino opened her mouth to retort, but then shut it just as quickly. Contradicting Shino at this point suggested that Shikamaru _was_ something more than her teammate, and that this was actually…

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Shikamaru had stilled and was watching her with interest, waiting for her response.

“Shino, that’s not the point.” If all else failed, deflection was a girl’s best friend. “My family knows about the regulations, and we would never do something so drastic without the proper approval. Besides, the Yamanaka gardens aren’t even _on_ the east side of the village. I’m sorry about your bugs”—a lie if she’d ever told one—“but don’t go blaming it on us without doing your research. Now if you’ll excuse us…” She gestured pointedly at the table setting.

Shino’s brows knit together behind his glasses, but he at least didn’t try to argue further. “Fine. I suppose I’ll have to take my queries elsewhere.”

“Great.” Ino pasted on one of her most scathing smiles. “Good _bye_ , Shino.”

If he recognized the sarcasm, he didn’t acknowledge it. “Goodbye, Ino. Shikamaru. Sorry to interrupt your date.”

Ino froze; a blush began to creep its way up from her neck to her hairline. She didn’t even fully register Shino’s departure—she was too busy staring down at the table’s surface, trying to avoid eye contact with the man across the table.

_But he… He said “just your teammate”! He couldn’t have thought that I… that_ we…

“Oi, Ino.” Shikamaru snapped his fingers just under her nose, startling her out of her daze. “You still with me?”

“W-with you? I’m not—” She cleared her throat, shaking her head. “I mean, umm… yeah. Yeah, I’m here. Just… ugh.” She made a face. “After all that talk about bugs, I’m not sure I’m hungry anymore.”

“Yeah, me neither.” He rubbed the back of his neck, smirking a little. “You wanna get out of here?”

“ _Please._ ” Ino was already halfway to her feet before he’d even finished the question.

They were just outside the door when she realized that she had almost let him off the hook. “Hey. Don’t think this is getting you out of what you owe me.”

Shikamaru held up his hands in mock surrender. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Can’t ruin our date.” A little spark of humor lit his eyes as he started to walk forward. Somehow, _date_ didn’t sound as bad when he said it. “So where to instead?”

“Hmm…” In a deft maneuver, Ino slipped her hand into his, threading their fingers together. His eyes widened, but he didn’t pull away. “I think you should surprise me. Just… not the eastern flower fields. I don’t think I can do anymore dead bugs.”

He snorted softly. “I think we can manage that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't intend to build these fics off of one another, but I once again solicited help in choosing a prompt from my roommate, and this is what she chose. It fit so seamlessly with what I'd set up in 17 that I just rolled with it.


	19. pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 19: pain
> 
> Shikamaru glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, already starting to move. “Even if you can walk, which I doubt, it would be too slow. We need to go find Choji and get you back to a medic.”

**19. _pain_**

“ _Shit_.”

Ino stood—at least, she tried to, an action made difficult by the pain that spiked through her ankle when she put any weight on it at all.

She hissed as she buckled back to the ground. Was it worth it to try to call out to Shikamaru or Choji? To give away her position when she was injured seemed beyond stupid. If she got desperate, trying to contact them with her clan jutsu was always an option. But she was running low on chakra and she was going to need that to defend herself if she was discovered—hand-to-hand combat certainly wasn’t an option now.

She decided to stay where she was and keep quiet, even as the pain in her leg made her want to scream. She hadn’t gotten out of an enemy-nin’s body as fast as she needed to, and the woman had regained enough control to snap her own ankle. It wouldn’t be the first time Ino had gotten injured in someone else’s body—one of these days it might be the death of her.

The breeze through the trees had picked up, and for an instant, Ino thought she saw movement flickering through the green and brown. _Great. Time to test just how good my aim is._ She fished in one of her pouches for a kunai, just in case.

When the blur moved toward her, she was ready. Too close to get a clean shot with the Mind Transfer, but she brought the kunai out in a wide arc, only pulling back at the last minute when she heard a familiar, quiet “hey!”.

Shikamaru hadn’t been quite quick enough to back away. The very edge of the blade had sliced a thin line open across his right cheekbone, and little droplets of blood had started to well to the surface.

“What the hell, Ino?”

“Sorry! I thought you might be an enemy.” She inched forward to examine the wound. Unfortunately, that small movement was enough to send another jolt of pain radiating from her ankle, and she winced.

Shikamaru took in the sight of the bruises along her pale skin, the unnatural angle of the joint. “What happened to you?”

“Broken ankle, it’s fine.” She traced her fingers just below the scratch on his cheek. It would be easy enough to heal without expending too much chakra—

“Ino.” Shikamaru caught her wrist, gesturing down at her battered limb. “ _That_ is not fine. What the hell are you doing try to heal me?”

“I don’t have enough chakra left to deal with my ankle properly. But the scratch is an easy fix.”

She started to channel the chakra to her fingers, but Shikamaru’s hand tensed around her wrist, arresting her movement just enough that she couldn’t reach the scratch.

“Stop. You are the most ridiculous person I know. Naruto included.” Forestalling any further discussion, Shikamaru looped one arm around her waist and the other under her knees, then abruptly stood up. Ino had to quickly sling her arms around his neck to avoid being toppled backwards.

“I could’ve walked with help,” she huffed. “You don’t have to carry me.”

Shikamaru glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, already starting to move. “Even if you can walk, which I doubt, it would be too slow. We need to go find Choji and get you back to a medic.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t prove to be that simple. When they found Choji, he quickly informed them that the medic of the squad they’d been sent out to provide backup for had also been injured, and his team had had to rush him back to the village.

It was going to be a long trudge home.

“Guess I’ll just have to tough it out then,” Ino said, starting to unloose herself from Shikamaru’s arms, but he shifted to compensate for the movement and shook his head, keeping her from touching the ground.

“Not on that leg, you’re not.”

Ino balked. “So you’re just going to carry me the whole way back?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

When she looked to Choji for support, he only shrugged. “Shikamaru’s right. You shouldn’t risk hurting yourself more.”

Ino was a restless creature by nature, and always had been. Sitting still didn’t suit her one bit. But with both her teammates staring her down and a bruise-mottled leg that hurt when she so much as brushed it against something, there was no point arguing.

“Fine.” She settled her arms back around Shikamaru’s neck. “But the instant I have enough chakra built up to start healing it…”

“I won’t stop you.” Shikamaru said dryly. “Let’s get going.”

It would be a few hours until they reached the village. Ino quickly found herself settling in against Shikamaru’s shoulder, and within the first half-hour, the pain had ebbed enough that her eyelids had begun to droop. Despite her protestations, she didn’t entirely mind being carried. Secure in Shikamaru’s arms, she was safe—that had always been true. When she finally closed her eyes, she dreamed of cool green forests and blue skies.

When the pain started up again, she was unprepared. The first sharp pulse jolted her awake, and she couldn’t suppress the cry of pain that escaped her.

Shikamaru skidded to a stop, readjusting his grip on her. “Ino? What’s wrong?”

She grimaced, curling in on herself as the throbbing started up again. Choji, who had gotten a little ahead when they stopped, appeared in her periphery, his brow knitted with concern.

“Is she okay?”

“I don’t know.” Shikamaru’s voice was a low grumble that reverberated through his chest. Ino tried to concentrate on that sound instead of the excruciating sensation in her leg, but it was proving difficult. “We’d better pick up the pace.”

“You need me to carry her for a while?” Choji asked.

Ino felt the muscles in Shikamaru’s shoulder jump as he shook his head. “I’ve got her. Let’s go.”

Under his breath, she thought she heard him mumble. “Hang in there, Ino.”

She drifted in and out from that point forward, pulses of pain bringing her momentarily back to consciousness. She hardly registered their arrival back at the village, the handoff from teammate to medic. By the time she woke again in the hospital bed, her ankle properly splinted, it was well into evening.

She’d hardly had time to take in her surroundings when the door opened. Her disheveled teammate was clutching coffee in one hand, stifling a yawn with the other. When he caught sight of her, awake and alert, he visibly relaxed.

“You’re awake,” Shikamaru said. He sat on the edge of her bed; he was still in the uniform flak jacket, dark rings under his eyes. “Thought you were still gonna be asleep by the time I got back.”

“How long have you been here? Where’s Choji?”

“Went to deliver the mission report.” Shikamaru studiously ignored her first question, taking a sip of his coffee. Ino made a playful grab for it, but Shikamaru held the cup out of her reach. “Nope, none for you while you’re in recovery.”

“It’s just a broken ankle.”

“That put you in so much pain you passed out.” He raised an eyebrow.

Ino didn’t see how _that_ had anything to do with coffee, but that thought dissipated in an instant when Shikamaru turned his head, exposing the right side of his face to the light. Under the fluorescent bulbs, the angry red scratch stood out starkly on his cheek. Distracted, Ino raised her hand to it, her fingertips ghosting over the skin.

“Sorry again. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Shikamaru shrugged, his mouth creasing. “I’ve had much worse.”

Before he could stop her, Ino channeled a little of her replenished chakra to her fingertips. She smoothed her thumb over the line, leaving the skin unblemished in its wake.

“Ino. I said you didn’t have to do that.” The reprimand was firm, but soft. Had she imagined it, or had Shikamaru leaned a little into the touch of her hand?

“Consider it a little bit of thanks. Since I’m always such a pain.”

A strange look passed over his face, too quick for her to catch. “Only when you don’t listen to your teammates when they’re trying to help you.”

“Fine, next time I’ll listen. Promise.”

He nearly snorted coffee at that. “Yeah, sure. I’ll believe that when I see it.”


	20. truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 20: truth
> 
> "Ino is sixteen and in love, and she cannot tell a soul."

**20. _truth_**

Ino is sixteen and in love, and she cannot tell a soul.

Sometimes, when the feelings threaten to overflow her capacity to hold them, she goes to talk to Asuma. She picks the nicest flowers they have not sold in the shop that day, and those she puts together in a bouquet to drop off at Kurenai’s. That is what Asuma would want. To his grave, she takes all the odd flowers—the ones that are perhaps a little droopy, or an odd color compared to their fellow blossoms, or that just don’t work well in the bouquets they’ve sold that day. She thinks Asuma would like that they are flowers with character.

She can almost hear his laugh as she sits at the graveside and tells him about them. A deep belly laugh, with just the slightest rattle to it. _Those cigarettes are going to kill you someday_ , she would have told him.

It is the first and perhaps only time Ino will admit that she was wrong.

She chatters as she arranges the flowers and clears the thin layer of dirt from the gravestone. She tells Asuma about the gossip she has heard from the patrons in the flower shop. She tells him about her little spats with Sakura, and the larger arguments she is not yet willing to have. She tells him about how much Mirai is growing and how much it warms her heart every time those pudgy little fingers close around one of her own.

All of it is deflection from the truth she is holding, pressed tight against her ribs.

The Asuma she remembers would have seen right through her prevaricating. He would let her dissemble for a while, but then, when she ran out of momentum, he would ask the question she knew was coming.

_“What’s bothering you, Ino?”_

And how can she tell him what’s wrong when she doesn’t even quite know herself?

“You told me not to lose to Sakura… in ninjutsu or in love.” She absently polishes the symbol of the Hidden Leaf above the characters of his name. “But now I’ve gone and done something stupid, and I don’t know if I can fulfill that promise.”

She can picture the look on her teacher’s face. He would remove the cigarette slowly from his mouth, his brow furrowing in that way that made him look so much like his father—though she would never tell him that.

She tries to find the words to explain this, but even talking to the memory of Asuma is suddenly hard. It was easy to tell Asuma about Sasuke—Asuma didn’t really _know_ Sasuke. But now…

She puts her head in her hands, heaving a sigh that she knows Asuma would call dramatic.

“Why did I have to go and fall for my stupid lazy teammate?”

This, she knows, would have caused her teacher to nearly choke on his cigarette.

“I know,” she groans. “It’s completely ridiculous. I mean, I’ve known him literally my whole life. He drives me crazy. He’s unmotivated and too smart for his own good and…”

_And dependable and loyal and deeply, deeply caring._ Even alone in the graveyard, she can feel her whole face burning.

And lately, she has found she cannot stop noticing the little details. The minute downturn of his mouth when he’s unhappy about something but trying to hide it. The precision of his hands as he forms signs. The way he is always a little gentler with her and Choji than he would be with anyone else.

And she has noticed little changes in herself too—the way her stomach flips whenever she makes him laugh; the strange, sudden spikes of jealousy when he mentions trips to Suna; the fire that spreads across her skin every time he touches her.

Asuma, she thinks, would have laughed to find his students in this predicament. He might even think she was trying to pull a prank on him, telling him this. But when he saw the tears glittering in her eyes, he would know that this was not a joke.

The problem with telling things to Asuma’s grave is that, ultimately, all Ino has are her memories and her imagination of him. And in this completely unprecedented situation, she cannot begin to know what he might advise.

“Hey, Ino.”

For a moment, she believes she has gotten completely lost in her memories, hearing Shikamaru’s voice. Then she sees his shadow fall across the gravestone, and she nearly jumps out of her skin. Had she said any of that aloud?

“Shikamaru.” She swipes hastily at her eyes. At least there is no need to explain her tears away, sitting before the grave of their teacher. She moves over to make room for him, rustling the flowers in her haste. “I didn’t know you were coming here today.”

“Just thought I’d drop by.”

He crouches on the ground next to her, his expression distant. Her eyes trace the lines of his face from temple to jaw, drinking in every detail. Has he always been so sharply handsome? Then she feels silly all over again because this is Shikamaru—no-aspirations Shikamaru, the Shikamaru she once wished she hadn’t been placed on a team with.

He catches her staring. “You okay? There something on my face?”

_Just searching for my dignity._ “No, I was just… thinking.”

It is his turn to study her. Ino knows she is beautiful, but she still wonders what he sees when he looks at her. His childhood friend? A vain young woman who cared more about her hair and makeup than her training? The battle-weary kunoichi, hollowed by grief and reforged by friendship? She has been all of those things, but she wonders what qualities he reads in her that she cannot see herself. Shikamaru is an analyst, a planner. When he looks at her, what futures does he see?

Suddenly, his hand is moving toward her hair, and she nearly jumps out of her skin.

“W-what?”

His fingers skim over the surface of her scalp. When he pulls them back, there is a leaf clutched between his index and middle fingers.

“You had a leaf in your hair.”

“Oh.” She hovers her hand gingerly over the spot, as if it might have been altered by his touch. “Thanks.”

She does not know what it is that triggers the memory—the leaf or the lighting or the faint smell of cigarette smoke that clings to his jacket. But she is reminded, suddenly and forcefully, of a conversation she once had with Asuma. He had come by the flower shop on his way to see Kurenai and as she had been ringing him up, a bit of stray greenery had come tumbling out of her ponytail. Asuma had laughed to see it, asking if she had started growing flowers in her hair.

She had rolled her eyes at him as usual. But as she stared at the bouquet he was buying, a question nagged at her. She had been thinking, at the time, of what flowers she might bring Sasuke in the hospital.

“Asuma-sensei… how do you know when you’re _really_ in love?”

His dumbstruck expression made her giggle. “Why are you asking me?” He looked nervously at the flowers on the counter. As if she didn’t know perfectly well where those flowers were headed. “I guess it’s when you want to be your truest self around a person. When you can trust them with that truth.”

At the time, she’d thought the answer was absurd—just Asuma’s way of deflecting from a subject he didn’t want to talk about. But as she knelt next to Shikamaru in front of their teacher’s grave, she thought she was beginning to understand what he meant.

Ino gave a little spruce to the flowers. “Thanks, Asuma-sensei.”

Shikamaru looked over at her in confusion. “Did you say something?”

“Just feeling grateful to our teacher. He gives pretty good advice.”

_Your truest self._ Ino wasn’t sure she was ready to share the truth just yet, but she knew it wouldn’t be long.


	21. elbow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 21\. elbow
> 
> "As he finished his preparations and settled back against the pillow, feeling the muscles in his back loosen, he had to admit that being able to sleep in a bed after days of travel wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
> 
> And he continued to feel that way for about two minutes, until an elbow drove into his side, nearly knocking the breath out of him. Grunting, he opened his eyes."

**21. _elbow_**

By the time they reached the inn, it was hour that no sensible person should be awake.

Normally, they would just have camped. But this assignment necessitated staying at this particular inn—tomorrow around midday, their target would be checking in, and they’d be tasked with monitoring his movements throughout the town until the other half of their squad arrived from another mission.

Ino was slumped against Shikamaru’s shoulder as they stood at the front desk and waited for the attendant to return, her eyes half-lidded; when he poked her in her shoulder, she hardly responded, swatting at him ineffectually.

“C’mon, you’ve only got to stay awake for another quarter-hour.” Shikamaru reminded her, though he had to admit that he himself was ready to collapse.

Blessedly, the proprietor reappeared from the hallway adjacent to the lobby, a key in her hand. She smiled indulgently as she situated herself back behind the desk.

“I’m afraid we only have the one room available currently. It’s a little small, but I’m sure a young couple like yourselves won’t mind being a little cozy.”

Shikamaru balked, the sudden movement enough to disturb Ino from her resting spot. But rather than giving him the glare he expected, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and smiled, batting her pretty blue eyes at the proprietor.

“Of course! It won’t be a problem. Will it, sweetheart?”

Her tone was sweet, but when he caught her gaze, he didn’t miss the “give-this-nice-lady-some-money-so-I-can-please-sleep” clearly written there.

“Not at all.”

He handed over the money and took the key, placing a hand on the small of Ino’s back to guide her along. She kept her arms secured around him all the way to the door, even when they were well out of the proprietor’s line of sight.

“I think you can let go now,” he muttered as they stepped inside.

The woman hadn’t exaggerated about the room being cramped quarters. The low bed consumed most of the floor space, with a little wooden nightstand wedged into the corner. There was hardly enough room to maneuver around. 

Ino staggered to the bed, falling in an ungraceful heap on top of the sheets. Shikamaru sat down gingerly at the foot of it, his back protesting every little movement. As he removed items from the travel bag, he tried to form a plan for the day ahead of them, but his thoughts kept wandering away, replaced by the gray haze of exhaustion.

Maybe it was best just to focus on the now. Sleeping arrangements in this closet of a room were going to be interesting. He was in the midst of pulling out the sleeping bag and blanket when he heard the telltale creak of Ino sitting up behind him on the bed.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m getting ready to sleep. What does it look like?”

“Shikamaru.” She leaned forward, resting her chin on his shoulder. “You’re not seriously going to sleep on the floor, are you? There’s barely enough space to stand.”

He flushed, crossing his arms in front of him. “I just thought—”

“We can share the bed.” Ino said matter of factly, as if that settled things.

In other circumstances, Shikamaru might have tried to argue the point, but that gray fog was descending over his thoughts again, and he wasn’t sure he had the energy to keep up a conversation much longer, much less an argument.

“Fine,” he muttered. “Choose a side, then.”

“Already chosen!” She sang out, flopping back with a dramatic flourish. Where had she gotten this sudden burst of energy? Shikamaru rubbed wearily at his eyes, which were starting to prickle with fatigue.

As he finished his preparations and settled back against the pillow, feeling the muscles in his back loosen, he had to admit that being able to sleep in a bed after days of travel wasn’t the _worst_ thing in the world.

And he continued to feel that way for about two minutes, until an elbow drove into his side, nearly knocking the breath out of him. Grunting, he opened his eyes.

His teammate was sprawled like a starfish, her long hair fanned out across her pillow. From the sound of her deep, even breathing, she was already asleep, completely oblivious to her invasion of his space.

Gently, he tucked her arm back against her side. _That should do it._

He couldn’t have been asleep for more than ten minutes when a knee knocked into his hip.

This newest intrusion proved more challenging than the first. It was nigh-impossible to move her knee without either injuring her, waking her, or both. He found instead that he had to contort his own body in an odd crescent shape to avoid the discomfort of bone grinding on bone. He was beginning to wonder if he shouldn’t just have tried the setup on the floor after all, no matter how narrow the space.

When, half an hour later, he turned in his sleep and inhaled a mouthful of hair, it was the last straw.

“Ino. _Ino_.” Apparently being poked in the side didn’t bother her nearly as much as him, because it took nearly a full minute of hissing her name and prodding at her to get any response. “Wake up.”

“Wha—?” She turned toward him, blinking bleary eyes in confusion.

His face was inches from hers. “If you don’t stop hogging the bed, I’m going to be covered in bruises by tomorrow morning and you’re going to have to listen to me complain even more than usual.”

Her brow wrinkled. She blinked once, twice, her mouth slightly agape. He wasn’t sure she had gotten any of that.

But apparently, something got through. “You’re so fussy,” she murmured; her eyes were already closing again. “Here.”

Without warning, she scooted toward the center of the bed—toward _him_ —and snuggled into his side, her cheek pressed to his shoulder. Her arm settled across his chest. “There. Now I can’t move any farther over and you can sleep.”

Technically, she should have been right. In actuality, Shikamaru was now more awake than ever, his pulse pounding so frantically he could feel the veins in his neck jumping. It was a good thing she had taken the right side of the bed; otherwise, he was sure she would’ve been able to hear his heart almost beating out of his chest.

Ino, though, seemed totally relaxed. Her eyes had closed again; there was the faintest imprint of a smile across her lips.

“Ino…” He started, but he couldn’t seem to find the words that came after.

“Hmm?” She hummed the response, and he could feel the vibration of it ghosting along his skin through the fabric of his shirt.

He moved his right hand gently, careful not to disturb her position on his shoulder, threading his fingers through the long strands of her hair.

“Nothing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have a bit of unfortunate news--the delay on this most recent chapter is due to the fact that my computer is rapidly failing me. I do have a new one on the way, but it won't be here until next week and I'm afraid that means I won't be able to finish this series on schedule by the end of February. But I do plan to finish it! Just slightly delayed. Thank you all for your patience and for all the encouragement you've given along the way!


	22. underneath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 22: underneath
> 
> "There was infinite potential contained in a bulb still buried beneath the surface."

**22. _underneath_**

There was infinite potential contained in a bulb still buried beneath the surface.

This cluster of blossoms had been late to bloom, though Ino had planted them long before others that were already flowering in profusion. Every morning, she came to check them, hoping for those first little green sprigs pushing through the soil. Every morning, she grew more disappointed.

“Sometimes,” her father told her, “flowers are just waiting for the right time. The right circumstances to bloom brightest.”

The bell rang, and her heart leapt, but it was only Mrs. Yamada coming to pick up her lilies. Ino rang her up and crossed the task off her to-do list as the bell rang again to signal her exit.

She didn’t know why she’d thought it would be him. There was no reason to expect him today. No missions on the horizon, no training to attend. And that was for the best—it was easier to keep a secret buried if you didn’t have to see the face of the person it was about.

And she had worked so hard to bury it, first in denial and then in sheer will. They were teammates. He knew her too well already—there was no reason for him to ever know about the messy feelings that lurked just underneath the surface of her skin, threatening to burst from her lips every time he made her angry, every time he made her laugh.

The bell rang again. She wiped sweat-slicked hands on her apron— _where had these sudden nerves come from?_ —and turned to address the new customer. It was about time for Shizune to come in to discuss flower orders for the annual memorial.

But the doorway was not Shizune. Ino’s heart skipped a beat.

Shikamaru gave a casual wave. He walked and set a neatly tied box down on the counter.

“Mom made too many dumplings. Asked me if I’d bring some to you and Choji.”

“Oh.” All the air rushed out of her lungs. His mother had sent him. Of course. “That was really nice of her. Please tell Yoshino I said thank you.”

She reached for the box, but when she went to pull it back, the weight of his hand fell over her own, stopping her.

“Ino, are you mad at me?”

“What?” She sputtered, her head spinning as she tried to focus on anything other than the point of contact between them.

“It seems like you’ve been avoiding me. I haven’t seen you in a week.”

“T-that happens all the time.”

“When one of us is away on a mission, sure.” His grip was rock solid. “But when we’re both in the village, you usually can’t resist the chance to boss me around for a while. So what did I do?”

She gently extracted her hand, cradling the box to her chest. “You didn’t do anything. I’ve just been busy.” Not a complete lie—her mother had come down with a cold earlier in the week, leaving her to tend the flower shop by herself. “I’m not mad or anything.”

“You sure?” She could have sworn there was genuine worry in his eyes.

“Believe me, if I was mad at you, you’d know,” she teased, and she saw the flicker of a smile light his face in response.

She slid the box onto the shelf beneath the counter and walked around to the other side, so she was standing right before him. There had been a time, not too long ago, when she could look him eye-to-eye, sometimes even look down at him. But now she was looking up at him; even standing on tiptoe wouldn’t quite make up for the difference in height.

“I can’t believe you were that worried.” She tilted her head a little, a smile curving her mouth.

He frowned, looking away. “Just don’t want to have something hanging over my head that you’re going to punish me for later.”

“You make me sound so mean, Shika.”

“Hm.” He smirked. “I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, based on simple pattern analysis of past experiences, I don’t want to be on the wrong end of your temper if I don’t have to be.”

“Well, you’re not.” _In fact, quite the opposite._ She closed her mouth before the words could escape, but it was a near thing.

“Well good.” Was that a blush spreading across his cheeks? “Then you should come to dinner tonight with me. And Choji. We’ve, uh…” He scrubbed at the back of his neck, a sure sign of nerves. “We’ve missed you.”

Ino rocked forward on her toes a little, her smile widening. “Sure. That sounds great.”

When she locked up the shop for the night, she checked on the bulbs one last time, just in case. And she was surprised to see the first little green shoots, poking up out of the soil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New computer has arrived! It'll be a while yet before all the files are transferred over, so it'll probably be a few more days before I'm able to finish this out. But I'll get there!


End file.
